[dhosek]

Speaking of Disney and architecture and parabolic shapes, apparently when the Disney concert hall was first built, the curved shapes of the building acted as parabolic reflectors which focused on nearby apartment buildings. They had to sand the panels to reduce the reflectivity because they were heating the apartments to as much as 140°F.

[rurban]

Good example. You need roughen it also for better sound quality on the inside. For Disney I had develop lot of linear algebra optimizations for smoothing which went over my head mostly, so I used symbolic solvers.

We don't have much sound optimization CAD programs, so we worked with light as replacement for sound, and looked at the reflections with raytracers. For the big, expensive concert halls and opera houses.