Threshold consultants design places of gathering
to learn, share wisdom, and pass along culture.
Learn more about the Arts Commons Transformation in Calgary.
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Performing Arts Cultural Educational Worship Commercial Experimental
“Lower Manhattan could have hardly asked for a more spectacular work of public architecture.”
- Michael Kimmelman
AZ Madonna, The Boston Globe
“Cambridge-based architecture firm Epstein Joslin and Chicago’s Threshold Acoustics may have created the region’s most acoustically alive concert venue with Meadow Hall, a warm and modern room furnished in handsome blond wood.”
Experimental Projects
News
Rice breaks ground on new home for arts
Slated to open in fall 2025, Sarofim Hall will bring art students and faculty under one roof for the first time. Learn More
Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) and the architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang have unveiled the design for the company’s new home, which promises to be the first purpose-built LEED Platinum theatre—i.e., constructed according to the highest level of “green building” certification—in the U.S. The 13,850-square-foot design will serve as a permanent home for HVSF, which for decades staged its open-air productions of classics and new works in temporary tents at Boscobel House and Gardens overlooking the Hudson River, and more recently relocated to a new permanent home in the hills above.
The Shedd Aquarium Releases Latest Renderings.
A significant education and conservation experience inside the new Shedd Aquarium transformations will create more equitable access to animals and nature. Learn More
Threshold is part of a dramatically revamped St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts (STLC) project led by Hariri Pontarini Architects (HPA) and joined by Seattle’s LMN Architects, Danish landscape and urban design studio SLA, and two Indigenous-owned practices: the Ontario-based Smoke Architecture and Tawaw Architecture Collective, based in Phoenix with Fisher Dachs Associates and Threshold. Dubbed Transparence, the proposal envisions rotating the central axis of the building’s main theater by 90 degrees to make way for a new public plaza while also cloaking the Brutalist landmark in a high-performance transparent facade.
We are pleased to be a part of The Obama Presidential Center team. This project represents a historic opportunity to build a world-class museum and public gathering space that celebrates our nation’s first African American President and First Lady on the South Side of Chicago.
Acoustics
Threshold consultants approach the visual realm of architecture to reinforce the subtlety, power, and delight that sound can bring to the built environment.
Audio/Video
The quality and clarity of sound and video remains paramount. We seek the highest quality of experience that delivers power, fidelity, and nuance for everyday and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Join us in support of movements for change.
Threshold staff accreditation and membership organizations.
“It is energizing to know that with each project I am able to help people: help them more easily communicate and learn; improve their ability to focus; reduce their stress; and facilitate the creation and enjoyment of art that can elevate the human experience.”
— Robin Glosemeyer Petrone, Acoustics Today, Winter 2022
Partner Scott Pfeiffer discusses the impact of architectural acoustics on our health. Our hearing evolved in the complexity of the forest, a place without boundaries. Tiny sounds, precisely discerned from the noise of the woods, conveyed life and death information. That same precision is innate to our team of acousticians, physicists, musicians, and audio/video specialists and informs our work as design consultants.
New Publications
Modern Theatres 1950 - 2020 by David Staples (Routledge April 2021) has been an international effort involving 40 collaborators in 14 countries including theatre people, architects, thinkers, engineers, acoustic and theatre consultants.
Including Threshold’s own Carl Giegold who contributed an article featuring the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Learn from Threshold Partners Carl Giegold and Robin Glosemeyer Petrone in the Science Channel’s “If We Built it Today” series featuring Concert Halls.