Arup is a leading theater and venue design and advisory firm, and the creative team behind the design of many of the world’s most beloved cultural places. We are artists, designers and architects, performers, conductors, engineers and consultants, and creative partners on projects of every kind and scale.

Our venue design work encompasses all forms of arts, culture, and entertainment – theater, art, dance, film, recording and broadcast, sports, and much more – including new buildings, renovations, temporary venues, adaptation, and innovative conversions. Our team brings hands-on experience as facility operators and in production management, as well as ongoing work as creative sound, light, and multimedia designers in the field.

Every venue is a unique integration of form, space, texture, sound, vision, and light. We take a people-centric, highly sensory approach to every one of our designs. We recognize that today’s venues must work seamlessly across the physical and digital worlds, supporting artistic creativity, equitable access, and operational sustainability. With Arup, you get to work with one collaborative team of arts, culture, and entertainment experts across acoustics, audio-visual, lighting, experience design, digital infrastructure, and operations, with a highly collaborative mindset.

How we can help you

Acoustics

Our industry leading acoustics experience allows us to shape sound to deliver extraordinary experiences that inspire and enable artists, and excite audiences. 

Acoustics

Superior acoustics transform and elevate cultural experiences by stirring deep emotional connections and activating our senses. 

Arup Soundlab helps clients to explore acoustic performance before a venue is built.

Our industry-leading experience allows us to shape sound to deliver extraordinary experiences that inspire and enable artists, and excite audiences. This relies on our deep understanding of the factors that drive room acoustics: form, shape, volume, materials, the importance of quiet or silence to enhance connection and create drama, and for rooms to respond to audiences and performers.

Our digital tools allow us to not only model the sounds of spaces during design but also enable clients to experience them using our innovative SoundLab and experiential environments.

What is SoundLab?

SoundLab is a collaborative environment where project constituents and stakeholders come together to answer fundamental questions like, “How will the orchestra sound in different seats in this venue?”, “How much noise from this new railroad will we hear at our residence?”, “Will these patient rooms be quiet enough to allow an optimal recovery experience?”, and “How much traffic noise will I hear in this new building?”. The process brings a common, shared understanding and confidence that the design outcomes will be as expected.

Learn more about SoundLab

Learn more about our acoustics service.

Audio visual design

We help our clients to imagine and deliver environments that are enabled digitally, where the technology is interwoven and embedded in every aspect of their projects. 

Audio visual design

Our practice brings a deep understanding of the ways that creatives and organisations can use technology to express and connect intellectually and emotionally with audiences and communities.

We help our clients to imagine and deliver environments that are enabled digitally, where the technology is interwoven and embedded in every aspect of their projects.

We support with development of building wide infrastructure and systems design, integration and implementation. Today, venue owners and operators know how important it is to connect to the outside world, on and offline. So we ensure you’re set up for broadcast, recording and live event streaming with systems for performance, presentation, information, and immersive environments. We are also experts in digital signage and wayfinding, ensuring a flowing experience for audiences and staff.

Developing a vision

Our venue consultants work with clients to navigate the process of creating a vision for a venue that considers the questions at the heart of venue development.

Developing a vision

Every venue project begins with some fundamental questions.

The answers help to define the experiential vision that the theater or venue needs to produce. Should something be built, and if so what? Who are you building it for? What performance experiences do you intend to offer? How much space do you need? How long will it take and what will it cost? How will it be governed and operated? 

Venues will also have functions beyond performances. Any design must consider core requirements of both the planning and operational process and encompass a range of issues, including functionality, flexibility, logistics, sustainability, and adaptability to a changing world.

Our venue consultants work collaboratively with our clients to navigate this process with visioning and project definition work, market research, feasibility and needs assessments, existing conditions surveys, benchmarking, operating and revenue models.

We also consider elements such as programming, site requirements/analysis/selection, project cost, project schedule, competition brief writing, design team selection, artistic programming/analysis/development. This includes integrated-industry leading thinking on sustainable development, digital masterplanning and strategy, accessible and inclusive environments.

Strategic planning

Our practice is focused on reflecting all the operational, business and technical requirements into every aspect of your project.

Strategic planning

While the core of our work lies in shaping the way artists and communities connect, we bring design expertise, experience, hands on operator perspectives and innovative tools to the planning of the entire venue, campus or district.

Our practice is focused on reflecting all the operational, business and technical requirements into every aspect of your project, ensuring you deliver the promise that your institution makes to the community. Design always touches the form, function and meaning of a venue, and we help clients to define their experiential goals and project their brand identity.

Once complete, you gain the foundations of a workable, commercially grounded scheme.

Venue planning and design

Our service covers the entire design process from site and market analysis, briefing, programming and planning, visitor and user experience design, building layout, circulation and logistics and the planning of artist support spaces and technical areas.

Venue planning and design

We take a people-centric, highly sensorial approach to every one of our designs.

In Bucheon, South Korea, we acted as the performing arts designer for the Bucheon Arts Center - a multi-venue arts centre and home to the Bucheon Philharmonic Orchestra.

Every venue is a unique integration of form, space, texture, sound, vision, and light. In performance spaces, this must allow artists to showcase every element of their talent in the most affecting ways. For visitors, an optimum experience is paramount, from their initial digital interactions at home, through their journey to the place, and in and out of the venues, ideally bought together in a way that creates delight and wonder.

We bring together a practical understanding of how each area of a cultural venue needs to work with the expertise to develop designs from initial sketches to 3D models and renderings.

We conduct benchmark/comparable studies, preliminary design workshops with clients and stakeholders, develop preliminary design concepts, seating layouts/sightlines and technical systems including AV, lighting, rigging, staging, adjustable acoustics etc.

Our service covers the entire design process from site and market analysis, briefing, programming and planning, visitor and user experience design, building layout, circulation and logistics and the planning of artist support spaces and technical areas. Our teams are experts in the conceptualisation and technical realisation of spaces from traditional forms, to new forms, transformable environments, and spaces supporting technology driven experiences.

Discover more

Explore more of our work including:

Post-completion support

Ensuring a cultural venue or organisation can succeed over the long-term.

Post-completion support

Our teams ensure arts and cultural venues gain the operational support and improvement they seek.

We understand the commercial, operational and artistic drivers that shape the cultural landscape and in particular the important challenges that face a new or renovated venue.

Our work in this area includes initial artistic operations support in venues we have designed, to collaboration on creative projects involving delivering experiences through physical and virtual environments.