Albert Yaying Xu

Albert Yaying Xu (born 1934) is a French Chinese acoustician. Born in Tianjin, China, he lives in Paris, France.

Life and career

In 1959, Xu graduated in architecture from Tsinghua University, obtaining a masters degree in acoustic engineering. Xu has been then a quintessential adviser and project designer, during twenty years, for the conception of many concert and polyvalent halls, music conservatories, recording studios, movie theatres and multiple high-tech sound systems in China, making him stand to be invited by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China as an Acoustic consultant, to collaborate with Seiji Ozawa from Boston Symphony Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan of Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for their performances in Beijing, China.Invited by avant-garde composer, conductor and writer Pierre Boulez, Xu worked as a researcher for room and psycho acoustic at IRCAM, then as head of acoustic engineering department at Copenhagen-based Brüel & Kjær where he developed innovative measuring technic in architectural acoustic, including speech intelligibility, measurement of a space’s impulsive response, time-span of reverberation and sound stimulations in scaling models. In 1984, Xu became senior chief acoustic consultant at a Paris-based acoustic research company, before being head of an international architectural acoustic agency based in the same city. He also became fellow research engineer in room acoustic at the Scientific and Technical Centre for Building. Since then Xu has collaborated and is still working with worldwide architects including I.M Pei, Ricardo Bofill, Frank Owen Gehry, Christian de Portzamparc, Massimiliano Fuksas, Santiago Calatrava, Mecanoo, Dominique Perrault, Manfredi Nicoletti and Jim Clemes. Xu gets his inspirations from musicians such as Herbert von Karajan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pierre Boulez, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti and Yuri Temirkanov, with whom he had a close dialogue about acoustic requirements of a concert hall.

Awards

Xu was the recipient of numerous awards including :

  • Honorary Medal from the French Academy of Architecture (1995 and 2004)
  • Honorary Medal from the City of Paris (2001)