Structure
As the home of the Canadian Opera Company, the Four Season’s Centre for Performing Arts modestly highlights the importance of opera through its advanced acoustic technology. The horseshoe auditorium is a pod within the exterior shell of the building, and is structurally isolated to prevent sound penetration. The auditorium rests on massive reinforced concrete beams spanning at the same level as the orchestra pit. Underneath the beams are rubber pads which absorb shock, vibrations and sound waves, ultimately soundproofing the space from any interruptions caused by the subway line. Other less structural considerations are the undulating back-walls of the venue, which diffuse the sound throughout the auditorium by reflecting the sound waves back to the stage, accounting for about 90 percent of the audible sound for the audience.
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Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)