Sound And Design Intersect In A New Facility For Dartmouth

The Warehouse, a new facility built for Dartmouth’s just-launched MFA sonic practice program, invites grad students to plumb the interplay between the physical environment and their chosen medium, sound. The 2,500-square-foot venue is entirely reconfigurable, from the modular custom furniture-on-wheels to the 24 speakers, and thus adaptable to whatever activity is unfolding, whether a lecture, performance, or listening party.

The site, a converted former college admin office in Hanover, New Hampshire, was gutted and the architecture left mostly raw, with concrete flooring and a silver-painted ceiling that blends with exposed ductwork. In lieu of solid walls, the space is defined by a skeletal steel rig—fitted with translucent polycarbonate panels, sawtooth acoustical foam, and a swath of plastic-strip curtains—that serves as an armature for the DMX lighting and multichannel sound systems, every component of which can be individually controlled. Glass doors enclose an equipment room as well as an office for program director Ash Fure, a renowned sonic artist who cocreated the lab with a pair of architects and frequent collaborators: her brother Adam Fure, a partner at Michigan-based T+E+A+M, and Stock-a-Studio founder Xavi Aguirre, whose experimental Boston practice’s investigation of disassembly and reshaping is on full display here. With its fluid scheme and customizable infrastructure, the Warehouse is where sound and space, artistry and research harmoniously intersect.