Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

This guide to the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts is about Steinmetz Hall, a concert hall that floats on 437 rubber and steel isolation pads to keep outside noise from ever reaching the audience. It follows engineers chasing an especially strict acoustic silence rating, and the seven-hundred-thousand-pound sound shell that rolls in on its own railroad tracks to reshape the room between a play and a symphony. Ground broke here in 2011, and the guide traces the delays that pushed the opening years past its original target.