Aula Lecture Theatre
A 1960s concrete lecture theatre where anyone past the tenth row was mostly guessing. We gave the back of the room its voice back.
- CLIENT
- University
- TYPE
- Retrofit
- FOCUS
- Speech intelligibility
- SIZE
- 420 seats
- STATUS
- Complete, 2025
- LOCATION
- 52.00°N 4.37°E
Brief
Lecturers were hoarse by the end of the day and students in the rear half relied on the slides. The university wanted it fixed without closing the hall for a term or covering the board-marked concrete the building is known for.
Approach
We measured speech transmission at forty seats, then built a model that matched those measurements. Listening sessions let the facilities team hear a lecture from row fourteen, before and after. The final scheme adds absorption to the rear wall and ceiling soffits, and splits the loudspeakers into three delayed zones.
Outcome
The work was done over two summer months. The back row now hears about as well as the front row used to, and nobody needs the microphone turned up to be heard.