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026 INTERVIEW


Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall was Rob Harris’ first major project as lead acoustician © Arup


It’s a little-discussed fact that the tempo of classical music compositions slowed in direct response to the ability to build larger performance spaces. As building techniques allowed larger halls to be constructed, their reverberation times forced composers to downshift tempo in order to retain musical intelligibility. Acoustics, in the last 60 years has come on apace and become an art as much as a science and engineering discipline. Leading the way is Arup Acoustics under the global leadership of Rob Harris. His passion, commitment and drive for world class sound has helped the practice gain a reputation as one of the largest, most well- respected acoustic consultancies, employing over one hundred acousticians in 13 offices around the world. Chatting to Rob at Arup Acoustics SoundLab in Central London it is easy to understand what drives him and why so many projects he has worked on have been so successful. Rob’s auditorium acoustic design and engineering credits for Arup Acoustics include Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, City Recital Hall Sydney Australia, Glyndebourne Opera House UK, Bruges Concertgebouw Belgium, Wales Millennium Centre Cardiff UK, Royal Opera House London UK, Copenhagen Opera House Denmark and Oslo Opera House. His recent openings include the new Kings Place recital hall in London and the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin. In addition to his ongoing design role, Rob’s job involves coordinating between Arup’s global regional leaders, ensuring that they remain at the forefront of advances in acoustic design and that they use their worldwide staff, resources and experience to best effect. Beyond the performing arts Arup Acoustics operate across a wide range of industries including airports, highways, the environment, education, healthcare and commerce. Rob’s journey into sound started as a student whilst studying for a degree in physics at Warwick University. Working on student theatre productions, helped foster an ambition to become a world class lighting designer. After graduation he moved down to London and whilst attending an interview at Theatre Projects Rob learnt that the technical department from the West End musical ‘Hair’ was looking for a sound operator. Rob duly applied and got the job, so beginning his career mixing on some of the top West End shows in the 1970s. After ‘Hair’ came ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ then time in Canada on ‘I do, I do’ staring Rock Hudson and Juliet Prowse. “It was a great time to be working in theatre sound. Of course everything was mixed on analogue consoles by hand but PA systems were just starting to be explored, developed and taken seriously,” he says.


THE EARLY YEARS Despite the exciting start Rob felt that working in the theatre was not a long-term


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“I could take you to a hall that looks good and sounds terrible or I could take you to ones that sound good


and look terrible. There is always a balance to be struck.”


career. His vacation training had been at the then Transport and Road Research Laboratory, working on engineering noise control of tyres as part of the Low Noise Heavy Goods Vehicle project. So in 1975 he studied for an MSc at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at Southampton University. His dissertation investigated the acoustics and sound reproduction of choral music in reverberant spaces, focussing on Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. “At that time I remember talking to people who would look completely blank when you talked about time delay for naturalness and the Haas effect, that describes the human psychoacoustic phenomena of correctly identifying the direction of a sound source according to the first sound heard. The first electronic time delay units were just starting to come out and they were still regarded as academic tools rather than being accepted as part of every day theatre equipment. The findings of my research concluded that it is valuable to use delay for source naturalness for music in the similar way that you use it for speech. As a result of my work I ended up being the sound consultant for Westminster Abbey for a number of years and helped oversee the installation of new sound reinforcement systems,” explains Rob. Following award of his MSc Rob worked for five years at Acoustic Technology Ltd, a specialist acoustic engineering practice. His work for the company was mainly for the onshore and offshore oil industries. As well as engineering noise control prediction, measurement and assessment, he developed innovative engineering methods for improving the perception of loudspeaker messages in high noise environments and for measuring long distance sound propagation. A move to the engineering design consultancy Arup in 1982, two years after the formation of Arup Acoustics by renowned acousticians Richard Cowell and Derek


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