AUDITORIUM PROJECT BY A
NEW ACOUSTIC SAILS SHAPE 

WonderLAD is a new hospitality center in Catania, Italy, for children with oncological disease and their families, where children can regain a sense of beauty trough art and creativity. It’s been designed by FrontiniTerrana Architects following the idea of Cinzia Favara Scacco and Emilio Randazzo of LAD Onlus, a non profit organisation that helps young patients during the difficult times of oncological therapies.

WonderLAD includes a new auditorium, whose interiors have been designed by architect Laura Montanini together with FrontiniTerrana and NACSound, with the acoustic consultancy of Francesco Pellisari: it's a new, multifunctional venue that can host up to 300 persons for conferences, presentations and events.

WonderLAD is a new hospitality center in Catania, Italy, for children with oncological disease and their families, where children can regain a sense of beauty trough art and creativity. It’s been designed by FrontiniTerrana Architects following the idea of Cinzia Favara Scacco and Emilio Randazzo of LAD Onlus, a non profit organisation that helps young patients during the difficult times of oncological therapies.

Auditorium of WanderLand Catania, Sicily, Italy 

The space is a long room with not very high ceiling, and the ceiling was covered for safety reason by insulation materials that were dumpening medium-high frequencies and not helping with the propagation of acoustic waves.

These issues were bril-liantly solved by arch. Laura Montanini, who worked on two areas of in-tervention for the acoustic interiors: the ceiling and the side walls. For the cei-ling Laura designed some custom-made, large trian-gular wooden panels to be hanged with steel wires that we called “acoustic sails”.

By tuning the position and inclination of these sails, we have been able to turn the ceiling into a diffusing element that help the mo-vement of sound waves to the end of the room, at the same time reducing reso-nance and improving the proportion of sound.

By tuning the position and inclination of these sails, we have been able to turn the ceiling into a diffusing element that help the mo-vement of sound waves to the end of the room, at the same time reducing reso-nance and improving the proportion of sound.

The side walls of the auditorium were modified by adding three layers of wood laths: this solutions al-lowed us to control the reflective behaviour of the walls, reducing echoes, improving phono absor-bency and adding at the same time to the sound the harmonics of the wood. The lateral panels were prototyped with the help of Emilio Randazzo and Davide Canducci to find the best combination of the size and distance of the laths layers. The final fine tuning of the panels was done “by ear” after the installation of the actual panels on the walls.
Last but not least, the audio system is based on omnidi-rectional speakers by Francesco Pellisari: a new, powerful, red Orus speaker (1000W) designed with Andrea Cestonaro, and two white Atun speakers made in collaboration with Stefano Giuliani.
The acoustic project included five omnidirectional speakers by NACSound .
Power max 150 W rms
Impedance 8 ohm-Re 6.2 ohm
Effective frequency range 36 Hz- 21.000 Hz
Efficiency 88 dB
Cabinet acoustic conical transmission line
Cabinet volume 9.2 L
Cross over Fc Low 920 Hz-12 dB/oct.
Cross over Fc High 1220 Hz-12 dB/oct.
Wave emission omnidirectional
Have guide natural wood