Balaklava Town Hall
8 Wallace Street
Balaklava SA 5461

• Acoustic Treatment

• Design
• Installation
• Project Management
• Support

The Balaklava Town Hall (BTH) (formerly known as the Balaklava & Dalkey Institute) was formed in 1876 and the original portion of the present building was opened in 1881. The building is listed on the State Heritage Listing. The BTH is owned by the Wakefield Regional Council (WRC), and run by a volunteer Management Committee. The vision of the Balaklava Town Hall is: To provide an innovative and quality facility for diverse entertainment, arts, social and education opportunities.

The mission statement is:
• To provide a quality, specialised and economical venue available to a variety of stakeholders.
• To be the venue of choice for conferences, events and live entertainment.
• To deliver economic impact to benefit the community.

Integrated Audio solutions was initially contacted by Kelly Bickle (Chair of the Balaklava Town Hall Management Committee) to evaluate the acoustics and the sound system for the main hall in the BTH. IAS conducted a site visit to go over the brief with the committee for the current and future uses for the hall, followed by reverb time measurements to establish the hall’s acoustic properties.

A plan was established. It was agreed to start with the room corrections before introducing the theatre sound system design. An acoustic analysis report was generated to determine the quantity of absorber panels needed. Three dimensional drawings were generated to best reflect layout aesthetics and absorber colour scheme, closely adhering to the heritage specified wall colours.

As the hall is multipurpose in nature, careful consideration was given for the orchestral and acoustic performances. This was achieved by taking advantages of some of the side wall reflections maintaining the “life” in the performance space.

Legally Blonde (performed by the local theatre group — Balaklava Community Arts Inc) was the first performance to take advantage of the hall’s acoustic treatment. IAS attended the full house performance to evaluate the result and to determine if any more acoustic treatment needed to be put forward. The results (as well as the performance of this fun and quirky production) was deemed first-class.

Result – Excellent: Performance was very cohesive with just the right amount of absorption to reflective wall ratio.