Hailed before it opened on December 10th as the most important building to rise in Boston in a generation, the Institute of Contemporary Arts sits, alone for the time being, at the water's edge in Boston Harbor.

But the ICA will not be alone for long. The city of Boston selected the ICA as the recipient of a site on the waterfront for a new museum that will be the cultural cornerstone of the Fan Pier development, a 43-mile long boardwalk along the harbor. Soon the new museum will be flanked by a hotel, an office building, and a residential tower.

The ICA is the first new art museum built in Boston in nearly one hundred years and the first building to be built in the United States by the internationally renowned architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

The 65,000-square-foot building has four public levels that fold ribbon-form, one on top of the other, starting with a stand of outdoor wooden bleachers that overlooks the water. On the second and third levels is the 325-seat Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater.

JaffeHolden provided the base building architectural acoustics and designed the performance audio system for the theater.

The floor, back wall, and ceiling of the theater on the second and third floors are created by extending the wood HarborWalk from the waterfront, up to the public bleacher seats, and into the building. The remaining walls are glazed in clear glass, allowing the harbor view to become a central feature of the space.  The glass walls can be controlled—from full transparency, to filtered light and no view, to total blackout—to meet performance needs.

JaffeHolden's Principal Russ Cooper and Project Manager Jerome Smith addressed the acoustical challenges of the glass walls with a system of sound absorbing banners that can be used during performances (dance or films) to reduce harsh reflections off the glass from amplified sound. An extensive study was done of the glass wall concept to determine the correct glass and framing structure to insure that the noise from aircraft activity from Logan Airport (in plain view from the theater) would not disturb the performances. The resultant construction was a composite glass sandwich incorporating a thick laminated glazing, airspace, and another layer of glazing. Special acoustical details at all of the glazing joints and framing were also implemented to limit sound leaks through the more light-weight portions of the assembly.

In addition, the theater has a sound control ceiling built with several layers of gypsum board and spring isolators to limit footfall noise from the wood-floored galleries above from being heard inside the theater.

Sound absorbing materials are concealed in the theater ceiling through wooden slats that are made from the same wood plank material being used throughout the building. The wall opposite the glass wall is a slatted glass, reinforced gypsum surface with acoustical insulation hidden behind to permanently control sound reflections and to control reverberation. The exhibit area ceilings have a series of skylights and triangular duct enclosures. The enclosures are made of absorptive panels to control reverberation in an otherwise very reflective room environment.

JaffeHolden's David LaDue designed the performance sound and audio infrastructure systems to provide not only high quality sound, but flexibility allowing the system to meet its highly varied programming needs. The primary reinforcement consists of a left, center, right loudspeaker system accompanied by two low frequency subwoofers. The fact that two of the theater's walls were comprised almost entirely of glass presented a number of challenges.

"This was definitely a unique design situation and one I had not encountered before inside a theater," notes LaDue. "But glass is common in other areas of buildings that we design systems for, such as lobbies and atriums. Generally, the key to dealing with glass from a sound standpoint is to avoid it. Meaning, you want to keep the sound from hitting the glass wherever possible, thus avoiding undesirable reflections and increased reverberance." To achieve this, LaDue selected loudspeakers with special consideration given to their pattern control, relative to the loudspeaker/glass/audience physical relationship.

"From an audio standpoint, we were most concerned as to how the glass would impact the sound for film presentations," says LaDue. "Typically for film program, the desire is to have as little reverberation as possible. But the combined approach of making use of the loudspeaker pattern control and aiming, and the implementation of absorption and acoustical banners, achieved very successful results." To gain the full film surround sound experience, additional loudspeakers were included in the design and are permanently mounted on the sides and rear of the seating area.

In addition to the primary and film sound systems, JaffeHolden also designed the auxiliary systems for the facility, such as intercom, paging and program feed, and ADA auxiliary hearing systems.

A number of performances in the theater have been scheduled for February that include Boston's own Alloy Orchestra, celebrating 15 years of creating live scores for classic silent films, and an evening of poetry and spoken word with Patti Smith.