continued

The entire room is now surfaced with slatted wood.  This treatment allows some areas to be tailored with absorptive material where needed, while in other areas where absorption is not needed, a hard backing is installed behind the wood slats.  These soft/hard materials alternate around the room to balance the acoustic signature; but outwardly, the room maintains the smoothly uniform look sought by Renzo Piano.

ERES
An electronic architecture system works by substituting virtual reflecting surfaces (that is, loudspeakers) to change the apparent size and shape of a room.  The system changes the apparent pattern of reflected sound, simulating reflections from surfaces that may not be physically present, and/or expanding useful (but weak) reflections that are naturally present. Electronic architecture cannot help an excessively reverberant room, but it is very effective for extending the acoustic response of a relatively dry room. "TheTimesCenter is a good example of a room where the acoustic signature is smooth and well-controlled," says JH electro-acoustical engineer, Mark Turpin, "but has a relatively short decay, consistent with its basic purpose as a lecture hall. In this case, electronic architecture extends and shapes the room's decay pattern to support acoustic music performance." 

Loudspeakers for the ERES are mounted to the lighting pipes around the room, with subwoofers hidden in the ceiling.

"We always strive to match the natural acoustics of a hall to its primary purpose," concludes Cooper.  "At TheTimesCenter, this meant that the room needed to be ideally suited to its lecture use."  Not so long ago, that choice would have severely limited the other programs suited to the room.  Recent refinements in electronic architecture provide a range of acoustic signatures matched to different types of performances, making TheTimesCenter as acoustically flexible as it is visually stunning.

TheTimesCenter opened to the public on September 17, 2007.