Canadian Music Centre

The Canadian Music Centre, a national institution dedicated to sonic art, required a large expansion to its facilities, including offices, conference space, archives, and a highly visible new public entrance. Another major impetus was to create a world-class performance space which would be flexible for all types of music, ranging from classical to experimental electro-acoustic. Thus the performance space is terraced to allow multiple audience-performer configurations.

Its most sophisticated feature is a robotic ceiling, consisting of an array of “acoustic petals” which are adjustable in height, orientation, and acoustic response, finely regulating echo and reverberation. Having the capability of flipping on a rotational axis to shift from reflective to absorptive, their adaptive configuration can “tune” the room for any performance to provide ideal pervasive acoustics.