Acoustical Considerations in the Design of Heydar Aliyev Center Auditorium

The auditorium within the Heydar Aliyev Center serves for an audience of 1200 and incorporates conference, concert and opera use altogether. Confronting the multi-functional performance program of the space together with uncompromising aesthetic considerations, coupled space concept has been adopted as an acoustical and architectural design aid. This paper presents mainly the dependable acoustics attained by the coupling of auxiliary spaces by employing of the right-sized coupled volume connected with proper finishing materials and variable aperture size which consequences in the differentiation of reverberation time within the main volume -namely multi-purpose auditoriumand the coupled room. Fixing the volume and room finishes as for getting the desired energy decay behavior, aperture size has come up to be the essential parameter to concentrate on. The proposed solution for conference, music and inter-related activities is for the best of early and late sound field energy decay control. The proper reverberation times are studied for the main hall alone and coupled space separately to find the results as of the optimum reverberation times over frequency range of the auditorium for performance-specific. Aperture size has an essential role in balancing the reverberation time distributions of the auditorium and coupled space. Stage tower acoustics and thoroughly wooden surfaces of auditorium are studied together with the coupled volume in search of optimum reverberation times for different purposes of coupling spaces. Within this study coupled volume is used as a design tool out of recent acoustical innovations. The form and materials within the main volume is worked out together to get the optimum sound energy decay forms for different activities. Apart from coupled space concept, stage house design, auditorium main back-wall design and side-wall face irregularities are studied within the aim of having an evendistribution of sound field throughout the hall. This paper presents the successful outcomes of a coupled volume design within such a collection of irregular forms out of minimum aesthetic compromises.