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About Tippet Rise
The Evolution of Olivier Hall
T
he Olivier Hall was the result of a collaboration with Arup and its lead acoustician Alban Bassuet (later the first director of Tippet Rise). Arup modified Snape Maltings, an old malt storage barn, into a concert
hall for Benjamin Britten’s operas in his home town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, some three hours north of London. They extended the roof area to create a space where sound bounced around before it drifted back down softly on the audience, a radical concept at the time which has never been bettered. Arup also developed the Halo, a ledge running around
Wigmore Hall in London, to catch the first sounds
of a concert and project them back at the audience, another innovation which improved the sound of concert halls. We embodied both of these inventions in a hall shaped in the dimensions of the classic Haydn jewelbox, based in turn on the supposedly divine proportions of the Temple of Solomon and the inner chamber of the Parthenon. These were the sanctuaries from which oracles spoke, where Homer was chanted, and from which the modern concert environment sprang.