The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Theatre opened in 2016 to host touring Broadway shows, concerts, and other entertainment events. The design team consists of Pelli Clarke Pelli, HKS Architects, Fisher Dachs Associates, and Jaffe Holden.
Delta Performance Hall seats 2,468 people, and the Regent Street Theatre seats 150 to 250 people in an intimate, black box theatre. A six-story grand lobby connects to a multi-use development and holds public art and events on an outdoor plaza to contribute to the energy on Regent Street.
The biggest challenges included designing an ideal aural environment for such a multi-use hall with a noisy, light rail transit system in front of the facility. In addition, the footprint of the site was extremely tight, and there was almost no room for the very large mechanical units needed to serve the seating area and stage.
If you haven't yet, read Part One of this article.
Architectural Details
Acoustic Diffusion In Delta Hall
Solid MDF blocks of varying depth are applied to the curves of the wall facing the stage. Blocks are 14'' high by 36'' long and vary in depth from 1'' to 6''. The deep ½''-wide reveals between the blocks add to their efficiency as diffusers. The remainder of the walls have thousands of linear feet of ½'' reveals horizontally distributed. The combination of ½'' reveals and 1'' to 6'' expressed MDF block produces an impression to the audience of smooth and even sound, even at high loudness levels. Our goal was sound that lacked harshness and acoustic glare for performances.
Bass Control Under The Balconies
In order to control a sense of boominess and overly loud bass mentioned previously, we specified the use of decorative wood panels mounted on carefully spaced supports along the back wall. The materials, mounting, and attachment were engineered to target the absorption of specific bass frequencies that would otherwise give the audience a sense of bass overload and bass harshness.
Orchestra Pit Treatments
The Eccles programming requires the use of the orchestra pit for musicians. This was a critical focus of our acoustic design.
Acoustic drapes on the upstage wall can be positioned by musicians behind specific instruments to control loudness and a sense of brittleness. Acoustic panels on the underside of the stage control overhead reflections. The upstage wall behind the drapes is angled and oriented to promote diffusion and dispersion of sound. In order for sound to travel unimpeded to the audience, the majority of musicians are positioned on a lift and only a few are positioned under the stage overhang. A dedicated air supply system along the floor of the rear of the pit provides temperature control for musicians without blowing the music.
Regent Street Theatre
The Regent Street Theatre is a flexible space containing 150 to 250 seats for presentations, intimate theatre, concerts, receptions, and dinner events. Adjustable acoustic drapes have been placed along three walls. This allows the room to be tuned to best suit programming ranging from live classical music by chamber music groups that need a long reverberation time and strong wall reflections, to DJs and amplified concerts that need a dead space. A large window wall overlooks Regent Street Plaza and is double-glazed with two laminated glass layers 12'' apart. This provides appropriate levels of sound isolation to prevent noise from a nearby loading dock from impacting performances. The theatre itself is completely isolated from Delta Hall by the use of structural isolation joins running from the basement to the roof. Sound is blocked by a two-inch-wide gap between the structures. Special sound doors and block walls allow full simultaneous use of the adjacent spaces.
Audio/Video Systems Design
The AV systems for the Eccles and Regent Street Theatre are designed to support the many different event types that the facilities need to support without having to resort to renting systems on a regular basis.
Eccles Theatre AV Systems
The Eccles Theatre systems must be able to support everything from simple events, to full concert level reinforcement for touring acts, to touring Broadway production support. One of the primary AV goals for the Eccles Theatre was to provide a system that would be rider-friendly and entice artists to stop in Salt Lake City for a one-night event. To achieve that goal, we recommended that the loudspeaker systems and the mixing console be leased instead of purchased. This allows the venue to stay current with the systems that change the most quickly and stay in that rider friendly zone as time goes by. Currently, the sound console is an Avid S6L, and the house loudspeaker system consists of left, center, and right main clusters of d&b audiotechnik J series line arrays, along with d&b audiotechnik subwoofers and permanently installed fills for box seats, under balcony, and over balcony areas.
There is an extensive infrastructure in place for analog and digital audio, analog and digital video, dry category cabling and fiber, and dedicated audio, video, and control networks. This infrastructure system supports today’s requirements and standards but also supports future standards for the foreseeable future.
An extensive digital signal processing system and control system act as the brain and nervous system of the facility and allow for quick adjustments to the system, with the ability to return to the default settings, after that particular event is over, with the touch of a button. There are also two large projection screens available for use, one each side of the proscenium opening.
Regent Street Theatre AV Systems
The Regent Street Theatre AV systems are typical for a flexible space. Some loudspeakers are installed overhead to provide background music and voice lift for the simple events, and other portable loudspeakers can be placed in the room and on the grid as necessary for a particular event setup. A complement of basic playback systems and microphones (wired and wireless) are provided as sources to the small digital mixer in the space. Infrastructure also appears in the room and at the grid on several connection panels, as it does in the Eccles Theatre and provides the flexibility in the AV systems that the programming in the room requires.
IT Infrastructure Design
Girding the rich audiovisual environment of the Eccles Theatre is the very latest in fiber optic and copper-based building infrastructure, which was designed by Jaffe Holden to support not only AV system performance and technical communications, but building networking of all types. This includes all personal communications to please the technology class of theatregoers and venue operators alike.
A Wireless Welcome
Wireless connectivity has evolved from a convenience for a limited number of users on the move to an expectation by all, regardless of crowd size and circulation. While it was once common theatre etiquette to turn off one’s cell phone as the house lights dimmed, event organizers have now begun to ask patrons to keep their devices on, to avail themselves of special features developed for their use while attending. Whether as a means to request refreshments from one’s seat, summon the readying of one’s coat or valet-parked car, check the digital version of the event program, access wayfinding to locate the nearest restroom, or receive a reminder to visit the gift shop on the way out, proprietors are making creative (and revenue-producing) use of the cultural phenomenon of wireless communications. Even some production companies are leveraging technology to engage with their audiences, be it through interactive exchanges with performers or streaming a front-row view from any seat in the house.
Such was the mindset in the planning of the Eccles Theatre. The objective for wireless service was to smoothly accommodate 2,500 patrons, all of whom might be encouraged to utilize their personal devices throughout the course of an event. To facilitate such a density of usage, Jaffe Holden designed a system of infrastructure based on a small-cell, high-bandwidth wireless deployment. A small-cell design reduces the radio transmission power at each wireless access point to limit the user population served by each device, enabling each to allocate more bandwidth per user, and to minimize interference with other wireless access points within the same space. The result is higher performance, providing higher throughput per user.
Another result is an increased quantity of wireless access points, which can be an esthetic concern in a beautifully appointed performance hall like the Eccles Theatre. Jaffe Holden coordinated closely with architectural features to conceal the devices, which, in turn, had wireless design implications, because the concealing elements can also impact the propagation of radio waves. Once the right balance was struck, all that was left was for patrons to enjoy the inspiring environs of the Eccles Theatre and its surrounding lobbies and galleries, all the while operating their handheld devices at will.
More Than A Theatre
The Eccles Theatre is housed within a larger, five-story building, including other performance venues, a substantial amount of office and meeting space, and several retail establishments that open directly onto bordering Regency Street. Wireless coverage permeates all of those spaces, as well as the adjacent outdoor plaza. In addition to wireless, an extensive IP telephony system and building-wide high-speed data network extend throughout the facility. The technology infrastructure designed by Jaffe Holden is built to meet every foreseeable demand and to adapt to emerging innovations for the life of this jewel of downtown Salt Lake City.
Measuring Results
The overwhelming success of the Eccles Theatre has been remarkable given the challenges of the tight footprint and the sophisticated demands of programming a multi-use hall. The acoustic measurements bear out the design criteria and modeling with a measured range of reverberation time of 1.6 to 1.25 seconds mid frequency, with audience present, depending on the presets selected for the acoustic systems.
A reverberation time of 1.6 seconds is ideal for opera resonance, while 1.25 is ideal for Broadway production quality. The acoustic character does not vary from seat to seat or from the lower level to the last seat in the upper tier. In fact, the RT varies only 1/10 of a second over this area. The C80, G, and D50 measured acoustic criteria met our targeted and modeled data. This is a direct result of the acoustic shaping and diffusion materials and locations.
Finally, the noise levels from HVAC and environmental noise has achieved NC 15-17, exceeding the design criteria of NC 20.
The Regent Street Theatre has an adjustable acoustic range of 0.8 seconds down to 0.5 seconds with all side wall drapes extended, and an NC 20 background noise level.
Mark Holden is chairman and lead acoustic designer at Jaffe Holden. He has collaborated on hundreds of diverse performance and exhibition space designs throughout the world. Holden thrives on the creative design processes that call on his unique skills as an engineer, physicist, communicator, and jazz musician to create superior acoustic environments. In January of 2016, he released Acoustics of Multi-Use Performing Arts Centers, a guide to achieving outstanding acoustics in flexible spaces, published by Taylor & Francis Group. www.jaffeholden.com