Acoustics meets architecture: a Toronto recording studio's real-room sound

Most recording studios chase silence. The Toronto laneway studio that anchors The Globe and Mail's annual roundup of Canada's best interiors takes the opposite approach, and the results are worth a closer look for anyone who builds, renovates or specs acoustically sensitive rooms.

The 1,100-square-foot space, designed by Superkul architects Kevin James and Meg Graham, was commissioned by an experienced record producer who told his architects he didn't want the dead-room treatment that defines most professional studios. He wanted the sound and feel of a real space. The producer uses books for sound dampening instead of conventional acoustic baffles, treating a wall of literature as both a design statement and a working acoustic element. An 18-foot feature wall wraps from the ground floor to the mezzanine, holding 34 guitars whose curved bodies and varied surface depths effectively scatter reflections the way an engineered diffuser would.

The project illustrates a quiet shift in how acoustic professionals are thinking about creative environments. Standard control-room geometry, with parallel walls papered in foam wedges, optimises for measurable RT60 numbers but can flatten the emotional dimensions of a recording. By giving the producer asymmetric volumes, dense bookshelves, hardwood and even a microphone hookup in the bathroom, the designers built variability into the acoustic signature of the room. The 12-foot skylight and ground-level ribbon window let in natural light without compromising privacy, because the windows are deliberately positioned to limit lines of sight rather than to minimise sound transmission alone.

For anyone evaluating a creative space, whether a home studio, a podcast booth, or a hospitality project where music is part of the experience, this Toronto build is a useful reference point. It says the goal of acoustic design isn't a target reverberation curve in isolation; it's a feel that matches how the occupant wants to work. Treatment, diffusion, isolation and even ergonomic decisions about lighting and sightlines all serve that brief. The Globe and Mail's full roundup features several other Canadian projects, from a West Coast writer's cabin to an artist studio, each working a different angle on the same idea.

[Read the full piece](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/style/style-magazine/article-canadas-best-architecture-and-interiors-a-showcase-of-creativity-at/)