Ian Bryan Hoffman is an architect, acoustic designer, and educator. He has spent his career committed to examining and understanding the curious interactions of sound and space, specifically as they affect the human experience. Educated in classical piano, engineering, and architecture, Hoffman is uniquely qualified to address the complex sensitivities of architectural and acoustic design, bridging the technical and creative, calculated and perceived, aural and tectonic.
Hoffman’s professional career has spanned both architecture and architectural acoustic design. Hoffman was a key member of acoustic design consulting firms in New York and Chicago and an integrated architectural design practice in Cleveland. He has been principally engaged in the design of performance and cultural arts spaces of varying scales and programs on five continents. Notable examples include the Jay Pritzker Music Pavilion, Millennium Park Chicago, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore, the Winspear Concert Hall in Edmonton, Alberta, and the Kohl Jazz Studies Building at the Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio. While his specialty is primarily in performing arts design, his project design experience also includes libraries, museums, worship spaces, educational buildings and lecture halls.
Prior to joining the faculty at Peabody, Hoffman served as an associate professor in the department of architecture at Judson University, in Elgin, Ill., where he also served as chair. Additionally, he has teaching experience as an adjunct instructor at Columbia College Chicago and has served as a guest lecturer and design critic at various institutions, including Virginia Tech, the Architecture Institute in Prague, and University College Dublin.
Design and research interests include innovations in performing arts design for music and spoken-word theater, the role of acoustic design in sustainable buildings, urban soundscapes, building tectonics, material explorations, and the intersection of visual and aural space.
Hoffman was the primary editor of Halls for Music Performance: Another Two Decades of Experience, 1982-2002, a 320-page reference, published by the Acoustical Society of America, documenting the design of music halls worldwide.