Inside National Sawdust, Williamsburg's Luminous Audio Black Hole

The story is improbable: A piano-loving tax lawyer hires untested architects to transform a 100-year-old sawdust factory into an acoustically tricked-out, next-generation venue for — of all things — chamber music.

But the result? Extraordinary.

Sitting on the corner of Wythe Avenue and North 6th Street, National Sawdust is a futuristic-looking black hole for sound. The brainchild of tax lawyer Kevin Dolan, the space was designed by architects Bureau V — their first gig ever — with remarkable acoustic engineering by Arup (a world-class firm that got famous for the structural design of a li’l venue known as the Sydney Opera House).

Brownstoner recently visited the space at 80 North 6th Street on a tour hosted by Open House New York and led by Bureau V Principal Stella Lee and Arup Principal Raj Patel.

The outside of National Sawdust was kept mostly as it was. The approximately 100-year-old building once housed National Sawdust, a factory that made sawdust used for heating, according to the New York Observer.

The most noticeable change is the building’s chaotic, brightly colored mural by artist-duo Assume Vivid Astro Focus. The artwork looks a bit like a cartoonist’s rendering of a charming drug-induced hallucination. But all the chaos and color melts away as soon as you step inside.

The building’s lobby is double height, glossy and dark but with a tall rectangular window cut through the facade. The walls — covered in smooth black ceramic tile — jut out at unexpected angles, giving visitors the feeling of standing at the bottom of a dark, glamorous crevasse.

The lobby is so narrow and inky that passing into the luminous main performance space feels like a revelation.

The room is open but intimate — big enough for 120 to 170 seated audiophiles, or 350 standing rock ‘n’ rollers.

It’s also a visual puzzle — the walls and ceiling are covered in a series of subtle patterns and boldly angled black lines that make you want to move around room looking for a perspective where everything makes visual sense.

The bright white components are acoustic panels made of perforated metal and fabric. Bureau V Principal Stella Lee told Brownstoner the arrangement of the black lines was created as a way of connecting the room’s wall-mounted systems — places for hanging lights or plugging in cables — but with a few additional stripes for pure visual effect.

The metal panels themselves each have a unique surface pattern created by manipulating a 3D model of the room’s black lines.

But the white panels are more than just decoration, they’re an integral part of National Sawdust’s sound-manipulating technology.

Thirty-five percent of the surface area of each panel is made of metal, a material that reflects sound back into the room. The rest is “acoustically transparent” speaker fabric, Patel told Brownstoner. The fabric conceals another layer of sound magic — an 18-inch space between panel and wall that can be filled with retractable acoustic curtains in a custom configuration.

This technology gives composers and musicians remarkable control over how music sounds in the room. Artists will be able to change the way sound is reflected or absorbed — optimizing the space for the amplified riffs of a rock band or the reverberating tones of a solo violinist.

“Per square foot, this is one of the most technically complex buildings we’ve ever designed,” Patel told Brownstoner — referring to the building’s intricate acoustic build-out.

But the acoustic skin of the theater is just one of the measures taken to make National Sawdust the perfect space for sound. The entire performance space itself had to be aurally disconnected from its surroundings.

How, for instance, did they cancel out the thunderous grumblings of the L train running beneath the concert hall every 10 minutes?

Giant springs.

The entire building is essentially floating on dozens of enormous steel springs and isolation joints. The springs absorb outside vibrations from trains and other sounds, creating a silent space ready for music. A vacuum for sound.

More than just a building, National Sawdust is a music incubator with the mission of supporting artists from composition through rehearsal, performance, and recording. The tricks and features of the space are intended to help shape music in the moment it’s made.

Areas of the stage floor have built-in elevators to create raised platforms of varying heights — changing both the visual and audio presentation of a performance.

From different perspectives, the black slashes through the space can resemble bike spokes, spider webs, or streets intersecting on a minimalist’s map.

The balcony space has a series of fold-down tables. A restaurant on the North 6th Street side of the building will also serve food at some performances.

The underground kitchen, shown above, still hasn’t been finished. You can see its fancy dumbwaiter on the right.

National Sawdust cost $16,000,000 to build, a price tag quite a bit higher than founder Kevin Dolan initially had in mind. But the tax expert came up with a novel way of sustainably funding the survival of his organization — he created a nonprofit that lets donors buy shares in the building, which they can then donate back to the organization.

Or sell. With Williamsburg property values increasing like they do, there’s no reason investors wouldn’t see a decent return.

The venue opened in October and has hosted performances from a number of  experimental composers and performers, including John Zorn, Rinde Eckert, and Philip Glass.

National Sawdust has so many facets of strangeness — its architecture, funding model, and even its musical performances. But the only way to truly understand the remarkable qualities of this bizarre and beautiful space is to hear them for yourself.

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