News and Features

We have recently commissioned the magnificent new music building at King’s College School in Wimbledon, which has acoustic and audio-visual systems design by AJA. The three-storey building houses music classrooms, practice rooms, rehearsal rooms of all sizes and a recording suite. Pride of place goes to the extraordinary 200-seat concert hall, for which we designed…

Wells Maltings is an impressive brick and flint building dating back to the mid-nineteenth century.  Set in the heart of Wells-next-the-Sea, it is one of nine former malt houses once employing 50 workers in the town. For many years The Maltings was used for community events, but in 2010 it was decided to completely renovate…

We are pleased to announce that this year’s winner of the AJA Research Seminar Paper Prize is Neil Dawes (pictured left). Neil’s paper is entitled “Cover Song Detection: Developing the Chroma Based Approaches to Detection for Large Scale Application with Greater Accuracy”. In non-technical terms, the paper discusses different approaches for automated detection of cover…

We are delighted to announce that Adrian James Acoustics has won two awards at the Association of Noise Consultants 2018 conference. Our work on the Nur Alem Pavilion for Expo 2017 was Highly Commended in the Building Acoustics category, and Principal Acoustics and Theatre Consultant Ian Rees won the Best Presentation award for his entertaining presentation…

The Mikhailovsky Theatre is a magnificent opera and ballet house in the heart of St Petersburg, first opened in 1833. The theatre’s programme is primarily a repertoire of opera and ballet by the resident companies but the theatre also stages concerts by the resident Mikhailovsky Orchestra and by visiting orchestras. As often happens in opera…

Adrian James Acoustics has significantly expanded over the last few years, and IT investment remains a vital part of that expansion. For many years we used an in-house spreadsheet system for timesheets and project tracking, but this had no way of managing resourcing or future planning. It also required frequent manual intervention to keep it…

Our Principal Acoustics & Theatre Consultant Ian Rees has worked on numerous projects, but the historic Dragon Hall, Norwich is particularly exciting.  This merchant’s hall dates from 1430 and is part of the “Norwich Twelve” – recognised as one of the city’s most important medieval buildings. Now a Writers’ Centre is being established at the…

Adrian was delighted to be invited to the SEN Legal Annual Conference at the Tower of London Conference Centre, previously the New Armouries*.  In between the many excellent presentations and discussions, this gave him the opportunity to re-visit the venue for which he was the acoustics consultant when it was converted in the Nineties.  He…

We were delighted to hear that the National Youth Choir of Great Britain made good use of the new music school at Greshams, where they were resident for their Spring 2018 course.  Several AJA staff turned up for their final concert in the rather less acoustically distinguished St Andrew’s Hall in Norwich, with occasional accompaniment…

Fletton Quays is part of a £120 million development in the heart of Peterborough.  This ambitious council-backed venture was launched in 2017 as the initial project for the Peterborough Investment Partnership.  The goal is to regenerate an area adjacent to the River Nene, creating an attractive space featuring apartments and restaurants, a hotel, a dedicated…