With new concert halls debuting apace across the us, American architects are buzzing about the art and science of acoustics. Craig Kellogg listens in at a new auditorium designed by Polshek Partnership Architects - Zankel Hall in New York. Stop the train: the soprano Renee Fleming is singing her solo in Zankel Hall. Would that someone could suddenly mute Manhattan's intrusive noises. Alas, Zankel is wedged into the basement of Carnegie Hall, cheek-by-jowl against the subway tracks. 'Nine feet away there's this several-hundred-ton thing going 50 miles an hour,' says one of Zankel's architects, Richard M Olcott, in only a slight overstatement of the situation. Resolving what Olcott, of Polshek Partnership Architects, told me was the 'very sensitive issue' of intruding subway noise occupied a great deal of his and his acoustician's time. In attempting to stop the transfer of vibrations from passing trains, the designers were careful to isolate as much of the basement's foundations as possible. However, work remains at the source of the noise, cushioning the subway tracks to muffle the rumbling where it starts.
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