I wrote a piece in the Weekend FT on the vagaries of concert halls and baseball stadiums:
If you build it, they will come. But they will not know what to expect.
New York Yankee fans are scratching their heads over the eccentric behaviour of their new $1.5bn baseball stadium in the Bronx. So far, it has proved very friendly to batters, giving up 20 home runs in the first four games.
Theories vary as to why the new stadium should be acting differently to the old one. It is built on an adjacent site and is supposed to be the same size. Yet batters have been regularly lofting balls out of the park and into the crowds, especially over right centre-field. Yankees fans talk of a “jet stream” effect carrying fly balls from high in the air into the stands.
The Yankees confront the same challenge as cricket teams and concert orchestras breaking in their new home turfs. No matter how carefully designed, each pitch, stadium and concert hall has a character.
Even the best laid plans of architects, engineers and specialists in acoustics can go awry. In the case of concert halls, they often do.
The rest is here.
