Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center

Location

Seattle, Washington

Owner

Seattle Symphony

Collaborators +

Project Size

Renovated area: 2,500 square feet

Project Status

Completed

Services

Architecture, Interior Design, Renovation + Adaptive Reuse

Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center creates an immersive, experimental, educational and performance arts venue at Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony. Incorporating sophisticated digital acoustics and projection technology, the interior renovation creates a highly flexible environment of “electronic architecture,” unbound by the dimensions of the room and allowing it to feel acoustically as reverberant as a concert hall, or as compact as the actual room.

From inception, Octave 9 was guided by a desire to design for equitable communities. The project provides access to experimentation and creates an incubator for historically omitted demographics in the traditional symphony format. The space expands on the Seattle Symphony’s well-established educational focus while providing a venue to host performances, meetings, and community events. The project serves as an experimental space for artists and composers while providing a transformable space, with numerous options for interactive projections, including a nearly-360-degree immersive experience.

All surfaces and materials needed to be absorptive to limit the presence of acoustic reflections. Speakers, microphones, projectors, lighting, and HVAC are all integrated into a custom-designed acoustically absorptive ceiling. Composed of 687 sound-absorbing cells, the ceiling designed and fabricated by LMN Architects optimizes the room’s acoustic goals while also integrating technical, electrical, and mechanical systems, including 10 projectors, 72 speakers, 28 microphones, and 68 color-changing LED lights. The result is an intimate venue that is highly flexible and capable of morphing to the needs of the performance or activity.