Alban Bassuet

"One of the best hall in Switzerland, maybe Europe", Cecilia Bartoli and Maxim Vengerov, February 2018 - GoOut

The building Includes 900-seat philharmonic hall, 100-seat black-box studio theatre, 100-seat music salon, music school, library and art studios. I worked closely with Bernard Tschumi for the acoustical design of the building and the performance spaces. We came up using OSB for the interior finishes of the hall when trying to find a material that would give surface texture to create a rich musical "timbre" but without absorbing too much sound. Bonded to the walls and sealed on its face, it works. In fact we all liked it so much that it was used in the rest of the building. The building is naturally ventilated. The structure of the hall sits on spring isolators to stop ground vibrations from the nearby trains to disturb musical performances. The acoustics in the hall is great. It was described as crystalline, enveloping , and working equally well for small ensembles to very large orchestras. 

“Judging by a recent performance with piano accompaniment of Cellia Costea’s “Vissi d’Arte” from Tosca, the theater’s acoustics are excellent. RPBW’s first opera house design promises to be a smashing success.” Victoria Newhouse – Architectural Record September 2016

I led the room acoustical design for this incredible project, one of the largest cultural project in Europe. Privately funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, it includes on a new 200,000 m2 park the 1,400-seat National Opera House home of the Greek National Opera, the National Library, a 400-seat flexible performance space, orchestra and choir rehearsal rooms, and a number of rehearsal and dances spaces. The architecture is by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, led by Giorgio Bianchi and Vassily Laffineur.

As an acoustician it was a great honor to design a new acoustical space in Greece, as Greek culture has been such an influence on the design of performance spaces throughout history but also such a source of inspiration for the development of opera. It is in fact fascinating to realize that Greece will unfortunately miss the early period of opera when it begins and flourishes in the rest of Europe, because of the Ottoman occupation. Ironically, when the rest of Europe turns toward Greece during the 16th century for inspiration in philosophy and the arts, with the first theaters being miniature replicas of Greek ancient theaters and plays largely inspired by Greek mythology, it is not until Greek's independence in the 19th century that Opera will start to flourish in Greece. We used this paradox as a source of inspiration for the design of the opera house, and tried to gather all the most successful opera spaces that had resulted from the great history of opera and combined them into a design for the 1st National Opera House of Greece, as a tribute to Greek's influence on the art form.  The design of the opera house finds inspiration in Dresden Semperoper, Buenos Aries Teatro Colon and Berlin Neues Schauspielhaus (destroyed), which all have a smaller number of seats in each balcony, to keep the outer walls of the space as part of the acoustical volume. Shaping on the walls and balconies are abstract interpretation of Baroque theaters and shaping applied on the underside of the balconies function like the steps of amphitheaters. A deep proscenium arch facilitates natural voice projection and the ceiling is used as a lighting projection surface to create different moods and effects. The architect had the genius of imagining a mobile hung from the ceiling instead of a chandelier, an ironic interpretation of the usual big chandelier of traditional opera house, celebrating the art form.

The architectural project is based on a gradual artificial rise of the grade across the entire site to create a higher elevation closer to the sea on top of which visitors will be able to appreciate views to the Acropolis one side and the Aegean sea on the other. The opera house is inserted inside the deepest elevation of the site like a geological formation and public access is maintained on top of it. 

The project is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016 for its first musical season.

We were planning outdoor concert events at Tippet Rise events for small audiences, and being really keen to preserve beautiful vistas to the surrounding landscape. I realized an old dream which was to create a room with no walls, that is to say by only keeping the corners and punching out big holes on the vertical surfaces and ceiling. The corners are used to re-direct sound towards the audience, creating louder and clearer sound. Removing the walls made the sound to come mostly from the side at high level and gave to the sound a beautiful elevated and enveloping quality. We organized the first half of performances indoor and played the second half in the shell. When asking the audience after the performance, almost everyone preferred the outdoor experience. My colleague Willem Boning was instrumental in optimizing the shape of the shell to distribute an equal amount of sound to the audience and to define the architecture. It was built by Gunnstock Timber Frame out of Cody Wyoming. 

"The Olivier Music Barn is a masterpiece of understatement – warm, reverberant and luminous – providing ideal acoustics for performers as well as an audience", Michael Webb - MARK magazine September 2016

This is the main performance and exhibition space at the Tippet Rise art center. It seats about 200. During regular opening hours, the building serves as an exhibition space with the seats removed. The main room has similar dimensions than the famous music room at the Esterhazi palace used by Haydn. It is a room with an acoustics that I have always admired. Its shape is small and fits between a cube and a double cube. It feels naturally enveloping both visually and acoustically, intimate and loud. For Tippet we added a pitch roof to express the building exterior which we listened to in the ArupSoundLab. Through optimization we found a pitch angle that re-directs more sound energy to the sides and which gives an even greater sense of envelopment and of elevation.

The building is also connected to 3 small residences serving as support spaces for performers and is at walking distance to the outdoor acoustical shell Tiara. Performances are organized to start outside in the Tiara, followed at intermission with a 2nd half in the music barn. It is fun to alternate indoor and outdoor musical performances. The complex sits near a creek surrounded by beautiful cottonwood trees, as the Montana painter Isabelle Johnson would have depicted. The building is made to emulate a true rustic barn but with a monochromatic dark red tone on the exterior from the rusted exterior siding and roofing which make it stand out at every season.

All the infrastructure had to be developed from scratch for this rural site location which did not possess any, including roads, power, water and sceptic. Water comes from rain fall, snow melt and wells, power from solar panels (one of the largest in Montana), and heating and cooling trough geothermal ground source and pumps. It was a lot of fun to design all these systems with the help of Arup, DOWL and MKK engineers. The landscape and approach experience was developed with a very inspired and sensible team from Oehme Van Sweden. Architecture and construction of the barn timber framing was developed with Gunnstock Timber Frame. 

"One of World’s 100 Greatest Places of 2018” - Time Magazine

"2018 Honor Award” - American Association of Landscape Architects

"2017 Best Museum North America” - Leading Cultural Destination Award

"2016 Building of the year” - Wired Magazine

"The acoustics, and much of everything else at Tippet Rise, were masterminded by director and conjuror-in-chief Alban Bassuet, who channelled the Halsteads’ fantasies into wood, gravel, pipes and power. They wanted rolling hills; he looped the roads around them. They wanted the ideal venue for chamber music; he started with the dimensions of the music room at Esterhazy, the palace in rural Hungary where Haydn spent much of his career. They wanted big sculptures; he made sure they could be built. Born in France and a New Yorker of 17 years, Bassuet began working on the project as an acoustician at the engineering behemoth Arup, then moved his family and his allegiances to Montana. He shares the Halsteads’ infectious belief in land and art as sacred springs of self-renewal." Ariella Budick - Financial Times

"Best places to go in the U.S. before summer's end." Andrew Sessa - Architectural Digest

"Buildings to look out for in 2016", Jonathan Glancey - BBC Culture

"The built environment reveals itself to the eye very much the way, over the course of a single piece of music, a composer introduces, deconstructs, and reprises a musical theme", Robert Landon - Archdaily

Roles

· Lead architectural design and infrastructure planning

· Lead acoustician and venue planner

· Build legal and financial framework for contracting

· Leading marketing, public relation and website design

· Community relation

· Participation to the music season programming

· Siting of artwork

· Curating and writing of the commission brief for the Structure of Landscape project

Construction Achievements:

· 3 unique venues:

.. 200-seat Olivier Music barn with world-class acoustics

.. 150-seat Tiara outdoor acoustical shell

.. 100-300-seat outdoor “structure of landscape” Domo by Ensamble Studio

· Design and construction in 2 years (September 2014 - SD start, June 2016 - 1st music performance in the completed facilities)

· Campus-wide underground infrastructure distribution built from scratch (power, water, fiber, geothermal)

· Contracting with more than 300 companies

· 56,000 sq.ft building facility: concert hall, artist residences (practicing, rehearsing living spaces), staff housing, utility building, outdoor acoustical shell

· 15 miles of new gravel road distributed on 11,500 acres ranch

· LEED Platinum facility:

.. Geothermal ground loop

.. Solar panels (bi-facial)

.. Distributive power generation with local residents

.. 100,000g rainwater collection system

.. Building roof-collection system for toilet flushing

.. Public transportation through electric vans

.. Structurally isolated panels constructions

· Assembling of 2 large sculptures by artist Mark Di Suvero

· Construction of the school house for DayDreams by Patrick Daugherty

· Construction of the sculpture Pioneer by Stephen Talasnik

· Three monumental concrete sculptures with Ensamble Studio requiring the use of the largest cranes available in Montana

Main partners:

· Arup: acoustics, theater design, structure, sustainability, geotechnical, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, security, transportation, infrastructure, initial road design

· OVS: Landscape architectural design

· Gunnstock Timber Frames: Timber framing and architectural design of the Olivier Barn and Residences, construction of Pioneer

· CTA: Architect of record for DayDreams, the Energy Building and the Solar Canopy

· Highplains Architects: LEED consultant and Architects for the portable restrooms

· DOWL: Local civil engineering for road designs, infrastructure distribution, public water systems and sewage

· MKK: Local MEP engineers

· General contractors: Jeff Engel construction (Olivier Barn, Residences, Energy Building), On Site Management (Structures of Landscape and assistance for completion of the building campus), JxM construction (DayDreams, Solar Array, Portable Restrooms)

. BAIRCO: Underground infrastructure distribution contractor - best in the US

. CMG: Road construction

· Public Relation: the amazing team at Polskin Arts & Communications Councelors from Finn Partners

The pieces invented by Ensamble Studio titled Structures of Landscape grew out of a research that was commissioned by Tippet Rise to investigate man-made structural interventions on the pristine Montana landscape of Tippet Rise that would express a visceral connection with the land. Ensemble Studio stroke our interest with past projects such as SGAE in Santiago de Compostela or The Truffle in the Costa da Morte, both in Spain. Those seem reminiscent of ancient civilization, almost as ruins of ancient temples or manifestations of Nature; both of which felt in line with our curatorial desire to create structures/sculptures at Tippet Rise that would resonate with the geological history of the region and appear symbiotic with the land. Ensamble develop a number of schemes for different building types: a recital hall, residences, a library. Interestingly what picked our interest the most was their original use of concrete and the idea to use the land as a cast for forming or “cultivating” structures as they call it. We then produced a commission brief that asked for a number of small structures or “Stones” (small compared to a multi-story building), which would function as shelters from the elements, but which would also develop a narrative for the exploration of the land. Ensamble produced more than 30 prototypes, hand-made in Spain all digitized and analyzed for their structural properties. We picked 3 which were built through the winter of 2016 just on time for the opening in June. Inverted and Beartooth Portals acts as the gates of the exhibition area where the majority of the artwork are exhibited at Tippet Rise. One is aligned with the summer solstice and one of the majestic canyon of the art center, the other towards the peaks of the Beartooth Mountains like the orientation of the music barn front window. Domo, the largest of the 3, is envisioned as a “transportation hub” or the central nerve of the sculpture area where the vans drop the visitors to explore more artwork through hiking trails. We conducted studies with Arup (Willem Boning) to optimize some of the shaping of the underside to help the projection of sound but also keep some of the sound in for musician’s support. We found a site that would offer favorable slopes for line of sight, dramatic views to the surrounding mountain ranges and which would set the area of circulation and drop-off of the public transportation system. As concrete was casted on plastic laid over the ground, the concrete maintained a very smooth structure with ripples created by the folds of the plastic giving the illusion of draperies of Renaissance marble statues from up-close. That smooth texture was also very reflective to sound and was helping to project sound to great distances around the structure. When locating a piano underneath the structure and removing the lead, the entire piece gives the illusion to become a gigantic piano.  A number of performances have been held or planned at Domo such as music which invoking the elements like the Scriabin commemorative concerts which I instigated. The Stones projects is one of the most original project at Tippet Rise. A continuation of land-art, blurring the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, evoking primal emotions and transcending time. The views to the mountains, the lightness of sound and mass of the structure are some of the most visceral and life changing multi-sensory experience I have ever had.

Realizing that modern concert halls had grown out of scale with music and the human qualities of earlier classical music spaces, Constellation is aspiring to re-create the rich and intimate atmosphere of the early rooms, which had followed a natural process of evolution over centuries and proved to be viscerally connected with music, architecture, and people who used them. 

I believe that Glenn KnicKrehm, the director of the Constellation Project, was one of the first entrepreneurs to realize that the performing arts were in the early 2000s at a beginning of a paradigm shift and that modern audiences wanted more, including performance spaces with higher emotional and immersive qualities, better proximity with performers and less formalities.

To understand the design parameters, the team set out to conduct a large-scale acoustical survey in more than 200 famous historical spaces in Europe.  The survey is one of the most extensive of its kind, at the end of which the design of the project started.  Instead of a single large concert hall used for all kind of repertoire, the building includes five performance spaces, each one tailored to a particular style of music.  The Great Hall seats 1,000.  It is inspired by the well-known space of the European palaces where many musical events and festivities would take place.  Smaller in scale than modern concert halls, its dimensions and shape are inherently connected with human's hearing properties and lead to specific timing of sound reflections (acoustical signature) which enhance acoustical intimacy and envelopment.  A dilemma of modern concerts, at larger scale, those specific sound reflections arrive later due to greater propagation distances and therefore the acoustics are completely different. 

The room does not have a defined stage area, which can be set on different balconies or orientation in the space.  It also has a Bach Organ celebrating the glorious area of 17th and 18th century organ compositions. 

Other rooms include a 700-seat opera house inspired by the Baroque theaters which incorporates a modernized version of the shutter and grove baroque scenery system; a 150-seat Jewel Box, a space that historically served for the development of chamber music; a 200-seat Oratorio for choral music among many other uses; and a 100-seat music salon. 

Fundraising for the project is still undergoing.  The site, already purchased, is located near Kendall Square in Boston.

The research work led for the design and development of the Constellation project has broken many grounds in theater design and acoustics and has resulted in a number of patents.  

James Turrell was commissioned to create a new interpretration of his SkySpace environments for Rice University. I worked with the artist and Tom Phifer Architects to design the acoustics of the space and incorporate immersive sound technology for performances - one of the very few Turrell's installations including sound. An invisible sound system is built inside the concrete walls of the viewing area. It uses ambisonic technology to create 3D virtual effects. We did performances with composer Michael Schumacher, it sounded awesome. The space is adjacent to the music department of Rice University and is working as a media lab and for site specific compositions. 

Measurement survey that I conducted for the Constellation Project in collaboration with my former colleague Neill Woodger. On a quest for the acoustical excellence of room for music to design a new concert hall, we surveyed up to 150 renowned historical spaces in Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, England and the United States. The survey followed an earlier research study led by Andrew Hersher from Harvard who identified up to 650 historical spaces which played a key role in the evolution of music. We tested a great number of spaces which proved to be successful over a long period of history and which had been used by composers themselves, hoping to discover acoustical features that would match musical styles and embody the symbiotic relationship between physical spaces and music. A life changing experience, the findings have been subject to several publications in the academic press. Choices of material, sizes and shapes of rooms evolved in parallel with musical style and tastes. Placements of musicians in space were much less restrained by modern conventions. The study highlighted the human scale, multi-dimensional, and immersive qualities of the early rooms and informed us of some of the ingredients that were part of experiencing music during the development of western music before the emergence of the modern concert hall archetype that we know today. The immersive and transcending qualities of those rooms inform us of the essential ingredients that we might be deeply seeking to experience from our contemporary platforms of presentation of the arts, while reminding us of the spiritual dimension of mankind revealed through the experience of sound and space.   

One of my 1st project working in New York in collaboration with Neill Woodger.  Room acoustical and sound system design.

A great project in Dallas which consisted of a large urban development aimed at covering the Woodall Rodgers Highway which runs through Dallas and divides the city in half, and constructing a park on top of it. The project reconnects the art and financial districts and became a benchmark in the US for how to turn a dividing Highway into a pleasant public park experience. Project realized with Tom Phifer Architects and Greg Reaves, Principal in charge at the time. I worked with the team to resolve the highway noise, and design a performance shell. We came up with an interesting design using perforated stainless steel elements. Lighting is inserted above the panels so that at night the illumination through the perforations of the shell project the effect of a tree on the ground. The perforation were distributed on the ceiling to help acoustics. More perforation in the middle for more sound to be absorbed, less perforation on the edges of the canopy to project sound. The shell is mostly used for amplified music.

Room acoustical design of the recital hall. 1st implementation of the cross-shape concert hall geometry (in cross-section). The sense of envelopment in the room is terrific. Plaster was applied with different mixtures of sand - more sand and texture at the top, less sand and texture at the bottom. It is a loud space, and works very well for Early Music. 

Sound art project done in collaboration with artist Stephen Vitiello. Stephen and I had tried to work together for a number of years, and one day through a commission from United Technology we realized a large scale 3D sound installation in middle of London. I designed a 3D sound system and structure (which ended up being rented). The piece was played for one week at the Broadgate Arena in London. Stephen and I spatialized the piece in an ambisonic SoundLab in Boston (thanks to the Constellation Art Center) with virtual loudspeakers for final reproduction in the 24 speakers array in London. Stephen used his field recordings from the Brasilian Amazon Forest. It attracted nearly half a million visitors. 

Competition done in collaboration with SO-IL architects. We did not win, but it was great fun, and we developed an interesting concert hall concept that maybe we'll build somewhere else. The brief was asking for a modern concert hall approach and that could work well for recitals (including the Chopin piano competition) , concerti and symphonies. We developed an inner-shell/outer-shell concert hall geometry which was intended to control loudness. The seating platforms are  conceived like acoustical pods, where strategically located wall surfaces near the audience catch the sound from the stage and the orchestra canopy. SO-IL came up with a very beautiful architectural interpretation, which made for a nice physical model. 

The SoundLab is a virtual reality listening environment which I developed at Arup soon after moving to New York in the early 2000. It takes the outputs from acoustical model computations or 3D recordings done in real spaces and plays the results in 3D ambisonic sound. That technology was available in research facilities for years before that, like at IRCAM where I was doing research work, but it was really the first time that it was implemented in a real world building design/engineering/consulting environment in the US. Using it on real projects, we were able to compare simulations with the results of built projects, which over the years allowed us to fine-tune the accuracy of simulation outputs. It took a particular relevance when we used the SoundLab to conduct the Constellation research, for which we had visited hundred of historical spaces in Europe and captured their acoustical signatures with 3D microphones. Through that research and design project, the SoundLab allowed us to replay the acoustics of those existing spaces and to make side by side comparisons of rooms, which of course is impossible in real-life, and to make very interesting subjective analyses of room acoustical "aesthetics". Over the years the SoundLab became an essential tool of the work at Arup. It was duplicated in many Arup offices around the world, and many people have since contributed to it. One of Arup Chairman declared that SoundLab had been one of the best thing that happened to Arup in the last 20 years, a great compliment coming from such a large and prestigious company. The SoundLab also became very popular with artists who were very interested to use the realistic quality of the technology for 3D sound art immersive compositions, which led to countless installations and new business avenues. 

Competition conducted in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects. 

Immersive sound and light installations with artists Alex Bradley and Charles Poulet, using the synaesthetic relathionship between sounds and colors. 

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Images provided by Ákos Major (http://akosmajor.com). All rights reserved.

3D sound recording of split orchestra performances for the occasion of NY-Phil 360 performance, including pieces from Charles Ives, and Stockhausen

Collaboration with Sebastien Agneessens for the Audemars Piguet 40th Anniversary's installation

Peer review of room acoustical design which included a full auralization of the hall before its renovation and comparison with the older Tully Hall.

Blind-folded story telling using 3D immersive ambisonic soundtrack. Sound system design. 

Collaboration with artist Charlie Morrow. Sound system design and spatialization of bird scenes as depicted in the Audubon Aviary exhibition. 24-loudspeaker ambisonic rig. One of the 1st large scale ambisonic installation I realized before I worked with Stephen Vitiello.  

Sound art installation project with artist Bill Fontana. Vibrations of the steel cable carrying the Millennium Bridge in London were captured using accelerometers then transformed into sound and played back inside the Turbine Hall of the Tate. 

Sound art installations in collaboration with artist Charlie Morrow. A 300 feet long 3D sound installation using 72 Genelec loudspeakers for the Nokia World Conference at the great Barcelona conference center building designed by Herzog & de Meuron Architects. Music and ambient sounds were mixed in 3D using ambisonic technology.

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Images provided by Ákos Major (http://akosmajor.com). All rights reserved.

3D immersive ambisonic sound art installation using sound of extinguished animal species, as part of the Ear to the Earth Festival at 3LDG theater, Lower Manhattan.