While housesitting for friends in Troy, New York, I came across a fascinating new-ish building on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. From the side, it looked like a wooden ship hull suspended inside a huge glass box on a Cornell-like slope.
Once inside, you can see fun details, like these walkways heading into the wooden bubble at different levels.
Inside the wooden part, there’s a large, pristine performance space that’s supposed to have amazing acoustics.
Speaking of sounds, throughout the building I could hear a mysterious and seemingly random melody. Upstairs, I discovered the source: an art exhibit that consisted of bowls floating in circular pools of water, clinking against each other in the most perfect way.
It turns out it’s the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), and it opened in 2008. The whole building is specially designed to have innovative acoustic features. Seems like RPI would be a very cool place to study music and sound technology.
