Island Sound Studios / Avex / TK Disk

Honolulu, Hawaii

The concept of a resort studio, where musicians can work undisturbed, away from city stress, is an especially alluring one. To make a great record, and relax in a beautiful, exotic locale while doing so, is a tempting proposition. For all that, however, there are not too many examples of successful resort studios around the world. One reason is the shrinking of record production budgets; another is the difficulty of operating a highly technological facility far away from the necessary support and maintenance structure.

Hawaii, though not exactly an underdeveloped island, is nonetheless located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, three thousand miles from Los Angeles. That may be the reason for the lack of any great commercial facility on the islands until recently.

TK Disc Studios is a complete music recording studio, conceived by Japanese producer, musician, and composer, Tetsuya Komuro. Aware of the natural beauty of the island and its attraction to many artists, he chose to relocate his operations to Honolulu. The site is a former restaurant building in a shopping center outside Honolulu, adjacent to a private waterway. The existing building shell had to conform o the mall’s standard and could not be changed substantially, but the new construction nonetheless required rebuilding of large structural parts. Limited room for the program and the studio’s sound isolation and acoustic performance requirements led to a split of the studio suites between the two floors for optimum horizontal and vertical adjacencies. The demand for enclosure in the studio spaces had to be reconciled with the advantages of the unique site by the water and the strong Hawaiian light.

The design attempts to reconcile the new intensive uses with the existing conditions, and to create a coherence without extensive changes to the building.

The facility is now called Island Sound Studios, after a recent ownership change.