Acoustic solid angle criteria in practice: transforming the Chapelle Corneille in Rouen into a concert hall

Yann Jurkiewicz , Eckhard Kahle , Thomas Wulfrank

A new concert hall for early music, chamber music and small ensembles is to be outfitted in a 17th century church in the city Rouen. The Chapelle Corneille is a large and beautifully renovated landmarked monument, with highly reverberant acoustics. The addition of a large amount of early energy is a major requirement for the acoustic transformation of the church into an Auditorium. But the imperatives of historical preservation are strong, and a previous project was cancelled due to an addition of acoustic reflectors that was judged visually offensive. During the architectural competition that followed the first project cancellation, the use of a new criteria based on solid angles made it possible for our design team to consider many options and quickly estimate their acoustic efficiency. This approach led to innovative solutions, both acoustically effective and architecturally integrated.

Mots clés: concert auditorium design; architectural acoustics; early reflections; church acoustics

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Yann Jurkiewicz, Eckhard Kahle, Thomas Wulfrank. Acoustic solid angle criteria in practice: transforming the Chapelle Corneille in Rouen into a concert hall. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810866⟩