Verdant Sound — Case Study

A recording studio that plays the landscape like an instrument

Two hours outside New York City, Verdant Sound is a recording studio and creative retreat set on six acres surrounding a private lake. The entire property is wired back to the control room, allowing artists to record everywhere from bedrooms and woods to a canoe in the middle of the lake. At its center is a soaring live room overlooking the water, conceived as an alternative to the enclosed environment of a conventional studio: a space where musicians could feel indoors and outdoors at the same time.

Bringing acoustic control to a room that feels endlessly open

With 34-foot cathedral ceilings and a vast wall of windows, the live room presented an unusual acoustic challenge. Verdant Sound needed sound absorption without sacrificing the open feeling central to its design. As Turf Senior Designer Matt Busscher recalls, they were looking for acoustic performance paired with a highly intentional design aesthetic. The Turf team, which included Architectural Product Designer Noah Taylor, initially explored a mix of standard and custom approaches; the client ultimately chose custom, allowing the acoustic treatment to become a seamless part of the architecture.

Bringing the outdoors in

Given considerable creative freedom, Turf looked to Verdant Sound’s own architectural drawings for inspiration. Busscher noticed the site’s unique topography and decided to translate its contours from architectural linework into geometry that could be carved into felt. The final installation combines 62 custom Carved Wallscape panels in Cream, featuring a stylized version of the actual site topography, with 102 custom Contour blades in Faded Denim that rise and fall beneath the cathedral ceiling. Together, the systems carry the landscape inside — with walls drawn from the form of the earth and a ceiling that founder Christy Liu says “kind of feels like a sky.”

A room that invites artists to press play

Despite the scale and customization, Studio Manager Alexia Peck describes installation as “shockingly simple,” completed over roughly two to three days. Today, visiting artists have been known to stop mid-tour, sit down at the piano, and simply begin playing. The Turf installation has also become a backdrop for photography and video — making the room, as Liu describes it, part studio and part set. At Verdant Sound, Turf is more than an acoustic necessity; Liu describes it as a centerpiece of the entire experience.