Since its establishment in 1984, French company L-Acoustics has operated with the conviction that sound, like light or space, has the power to move people and that the technologies involved should be worthy of that potential. Through a wide variety of high-profile projects achieved over the past four decades, L-Acoustics has adapted and expanded its offering to prove the central argument that sound cannot be reconsideration introduced at the end of a process but one addressed early, carry the same critical importance as structural make-up or spatial flow. Today, its comprehensive, holistically deployed, offering comprises everything from loudspeakers, amplification, spatial systems, predictive design software, and acoustic modeling tools. Technologies like L-ISA Hyperreal Sound and HYRISS are strategically employed to place individual sound sources precisely in three-dimensional spaces, imbuing them with as deliberate a sound profile as a visual identity.
The ultimate aim: for sound systems to stop being perceptible as standalone technologies and for them to full-blend into the experiences they facilitate’ when an audience hears a performer’s voice from the direction of the performer; when the acoustic character of a space feels intentional rather than accidental; and when sound and architecture work together to attain a shared objective.
L-Acoustics operates as an essential partner and has done so with some of the world’s best recognized architecture and interior design firms. Heading up this comprehensive suite of services is Architecture Engagement Global Lead Grace Xu. With the brand serving as an important sponsor of this year’s ICFF and Xu moderating a panel on the topic during the fair, she shared more about her thinking and the current state of the acoustics industry.
(Top image courtesy of L’Acoustics)
Image courtesy of L'Acoustics
What is your background? How did you arrive at your current position?
My background is multidisciplinary, spanning architecture, brand strategy, and experiential design. I have over a decade of experience shaping digital and physical experiences across technology, entertainment, and retail.
I trained as an architect, earning a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from McGill University and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. My architectural foundation was strengthened early in my career at Henning Larsen Architects in Copenhagen, where I worked on international cultural competitions including a theater in Denmark, a museum in California, and a town hall in Sweden.
Previously at PepsiCo Design + Innovation Center, I led large-scale experiential initiatives such as activations at the Super Bowl and Disneyland, exploring how immersive environments, brand storytelling, and multi-sensory design could translate brand values into physical space.
Most recently I led the design and build of a global suite of artist and creator studios for Amazon Music. In this role, I worked intimately with sound as both a technical and expressive medium, integrating acoustic performance, auditory storytelling, and spatial experience into each environment. The work required operating within tight technical, spatial, and brand constraints while still delivering spaces that were visually and acoustically compelling.
Spanning Los Angeles, Berlin, Tokyo, Brooklyn, Seattle, and Mexico City, each space was conceived to reflect the Amazon Music brand while also responding to local culture, context, and creative communities, resulting in environments that were both globally coherent and distinctly place specific.
Currently at L-Acoustics, I lead architecture engagement globally. My role brings these threads together, architecture, sound, and branded experience design, to help architects and interior designers integrate sound as a core, expressive layer of space.
Image courtesy of L'Acoustics
Talk more about how L-Acoustics collaborates with architecture and interior design firms?
L-Acoustics collaborates with architecture and interior design firms as an early stage creative and technical partner, working alongside designers to integrate sound as a fundamental component of spatial experience. These relationships are built on shared authorship and long-term collaboration, with sound considered in parallel with form, materiality, and light rather than as a downstream technical requirement.
Across typologies, L-Acoustics has partnered with leading architects and designers on culturally significant projects where sound plays a defining role. In the performing arts, this includes venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris by Jean Nouvel, the Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid Architects, the San Diego Symphony Jacobs Music Center by HGA, and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. In hospitality and nightlife, collaborations include Nobu Toronto with Turner Fleischer Architects, OMNIA Las Vegas and LIV Nightclub with Rockwell Group, and UNVRS in Ibiza.
The company has also contributed to major sports and public venues, including the Kaseya Center by Populous, global events such as the Super Bowl, and stadiums like Allianz Arena in Munich, as well as immersive and cultural projects such as ABBA Voyage in London and Kamasi Washington at LACMA.
These collaborations typically involve early acoustic modeling, system integration, and iterative tuning. By making sound perceptible early, designers can align acoustic intent with architectural vision, resulting in environments where sound functions as an expressive design material rather than a technical afterthought.
What are some of the main challenges with acoustic technologies today, including convincing different stakeholders of their importance in spatial design?
One of the central challenges facing the industry today is the dominance of the visual. In many contemporary environments, particularly concerts and large scale venues, screens and imagery occupy the majority of spatial attention, while sound is expected to adapt, recede, or remain discreet. This imbalance affects audiences, as well as artists, who are often far more visually than acoustically engaged with their own sound.
From an anthropological perspective, sound plays a fundamental role in human wellbeing, shaping how we feel, connect, and orient ourselves in the world. Long before language or architecture, sound served as a primary means of communication, signaling safety, presence, rhythm, and emotion. Today, sound continues to influence our cognitive focus, sense of comfort, and emotional response to space, often operating at a subconscious level.
The challenge is that in contemporary design culture, sound is often overshadowed by the dominance of the visual, or reduced to a technical concern rather than recognized as an experiential one. For disciplines where atmosphere, performance, and human connection are central, including architecture, cultural spaces, and public environments, this under-recognition limits the full potential of spatial experience.
For L-Acoustics, the opportunity lies in reframing sound as a positive, generative force in design, one that supports wellbeing, fosters emotional connection, and enhances how people inhabit spaces. This means helping stakeholders rediscover the emotional, intellectual, and organic relationship humans have with sound, and elevating it from a secondary system to a core contributor to experience, meaning, and quality of life.
Another challenge lies in aligning perspectives and goals. Architects, clients, engineers, and operators often approach sound with different priorities and constraints. Achieving a strong outcome requires balancing these viewpoints and making thoughtful compromises, ensuring that acoustic ambitions support architectural vision, operational needs, and human experience simultaneously.
Image courtesy of L'Acoustics
What are some of the latest developments in acoustic and sound technology that are making these intangibles more tangible and accessible as design materials?
Until recently, sound was largely absent from the early stages of spatial design: introduced late, adapted to finished architecture, treated as a technical problem rather than a design decision. What has changed is the ability to model, place, and shape sound with the same precision and intentionality that architects bring to light, material, and circulation.
Predictive tools like Soundvision allow acoustic behavior to be visualized before a space is built, making sound legible alongside architectural drawings, enabling decisions about speaker placement, coverage, and room response to be made when they can still influence the design rather than simply react to it.
Immersive audio technologies like L-ISA go further: rather than projecting a mixed signal from fixed points, they allow individual sound sources to be positioned and moved through space in three dimensions. A voice can come from where the speaker is standing. A musical instrument can occupy a specific location in the room. Sound becomes directional, dynamic, and spatial. As with lighting, it can be composed and choreographed, not just amplified.
Technologies like Ambiance address a different layer: the acoustic character of the space itself. By actively shaping reverberation, clarity, and intimacy, a room can be given a consistent acoustic identity, or adapted to different uses without physical intervention. A conference space and a concert hall can, in certain conditions, occupy the same room.
Image courtesy of L'Acoustics
At the residential and hospitality scale, HYRISS takes this a step further. By embedding a high-resolution network of loudspeakers throughout a space — walls, ceilings, floors — HYRISS allows a single room to inhabit multiple acoustic identities. A living space can shift from intimate listening to something closer to a concert hall environment. The acoustic character of the room becomes programmable — a design parameter that adapts to use rather than being fixed at construction. For architects working on high-end residential or experiential hospitality projects, it represents a genuinely new way to think about the possibilities of a space.
The cumulative effect of these developments is a shift in when and how sound enters the design conversation. It is no longer a constraint to be managed at the end of a project. It is a material with spatial properties, and one that is increasingly being designed with the same deliberateness as everything else in the room.
