Meeting Topic: An Evening with John Storyk
Moderator Name: Dirk Noy, WSDG
Speaker Name: John Storyk, WSDG
Meeting Location: Zurich, Switzerland
About 20 participants of AES and VDT gathered on this muggy summer-evening at the TBZ (Technische Berufsschule zurich) to meet the legendary architect and acoustician John Storyk. Still travelling around the world for advice and presentations, the 73 year old John Storyk arrived looking much younger and hiding his jet lag professionally. John started the tour thru his more than 50 years of professional life and 3'500 projects with the very beginning, the design and supervision of Electric Lady Studios in NYC. The young John got the job from Jimi Hendrix, who wanted the studio in similar design like the Cerebrum Club, John's first design after his studies at Princeton University. John described the problems and the solutions he found and also the resulting friendship to Jimi. This was the starting point to his very successful career. During his presentation, John picked several remarkable projects of his large completed pool of production-, broadcast-, entertainment-facilities, recording studios, conference rooms, theaters and restaurant designs to describe typical issues with building structure, acoustics, clients, stakeholders, and constructors during planning and implementation phase. We got some insights to his worldwide expansion as WSDG (Walters-Storyk Design Group), founded in 1987, which is partly represented by Dirk Noy located in Basel. After the interesting event, discussions continued at the sponsored apéro. Later in the evening, a small group around John and Dirk concluded the event at a nearby restaurant. We would like to thank John and Dirk of WSDG and the AES would like to thank Christopher Sauder of VDT and Dirk for the perfect organization.
Written By: Gabriel Leuzinger
