Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, San Francisco
RETROFIT TEAM
ARCHITECTS: INTERSTICE Architects and Case+Abst Architects, (415) 351-3900
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Guzman Construction Group
MEP ENGINEERS: Glumac and Interface Engineering Inc.
ACOUSTICAL ENGINEER: Salter
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: FTF Engineering
FIRE/CODE CONSULTANT: Holmes
MILLWORK IN LOBBY: Architectural Wood Design Inc.
MATERIALS
The main room in the new suite of voice/instrumentation-specialized rooms features a curved seating arrangement on stepped dynamic roll-out platforms, each equipped with foldable/collapsible seats. This allows for the entire room to be an unencumbered open rehearsal room, once the 120 seats are telescoped away to form a 6-foot curved wall against the windowed street façade.
It was important that although it would function most days as a large classroom, it would not
look like one. For this reason, wood was chosen to impart an instrumental feel to the room. This resonated with the room’s ability to be finely tuned to the acoustic and programmatic needs of the occupants and connected it thematically to other performance spaces within the school. Along its walls and vertical surfaces straight-grain Douglas fir was used in panels and strips, depending on whether it needed to deflect and disperse sound, conceal acoustic treatments, or capture acoustical curtains or lighting-control mechanisms throughout the space.
As a theater-ready space, the finely tuned acoustical layout of this space is hidden from view, protected behind the clear, straight-grain slats that run continually floor to ceiling around the room. At the front of the room, the strips travel in grouped ribbons of pre-curved sine-waves like musical staffs, reminiscent of the way sound is produced and propagates, to create a more reflective and dispersive “wetter” environment to sound. They protrude to allow for AV hook-ups and then retract to allow concealed connectors for microphones and amplification equipment.
The existing coffered concrete ceilings were exposed to take advantage of the deep dispersal texture with absorptive acoustic materials added to the upper recessed slab areas to cancel flutter and absorb sound parallel to the floor. Further special tunable elements include motorized retractable acoustic veils along with blackout-control roll shades for lighting and glare control for performances, film presentations or private receptions. Additional drop-down acoustical shades, which absorb the reflective quality of hard surfaces for choral recording sessions, were placed at the front of the room to cover and conceal the teaching whiteboards and AV display screen while acting as projection screens in a classroom setting.
The following is a sampling of materials used in the project:
TELESCOPIC SEATING: SEDA
FLOORING: Marmoleum from Forbo and Oak Noir Wood in Choral Room from Boen
WOOD WALL PANELS AND CEILINGS: Grille Wood from Madrid
LINEAR SUSPENDED LIGHTS: Finelite
CYLINDER THEATRICAL LIGHTS: Lucifer Lighting Co.
THE RETROFIT
Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory is known for its performing-arts curriculum. The designers were asked to renovate a raw 2,300-square-foot rectangular space to create a four-studio suite
of voice/instrumentation-specialized rooms to enhance and connect the choral performance to the school’s recently completed main theater. The program aspiration was intensified by requiring the largest of this suite of spaces to accommodate small impromptu performances, choreography rehearsals, and special event dinners and receptions when not serving as a 120-seat auditorium classroom for the entire school chorus to practice in or record together.
From this new main choral rehearsal room, the designers worked to squeeze in three associated but acoustically isolated rooms: a recording studio control room, smaller practice room for instrumental ensembles and single-artist voice recording booth. These separate studio rooms were designed to be used in conjunction with, or in isolation from, the larger choral rehearsal space and all are connected fiber optically as a choral “green room” to the larger theater. This technically allows the choral studio rooms to participate in real-time performances that take place on stage or record directly over tracks from the on-stage recordings.
PHOTOS: Cesar Rubio Photography unless otherwise noted