The Best Remaining Seat: Evaluating Auditorium Plans for Desirability

It is important that an auditorium be designed to have as many good seats as possible. Not all seats in an auditorium are judged to be equally good. This is manifested in that the audience does not choose its seats randomly. The audience understands intuitively that, generally speaking, the closer a seat is to the performers, and the more straight on the better it is. Acoustics should be the most important consideration in selecting a seat, prior to a concert. However, the visual, comfort and economic factors are also important, along with others, not easy to isolate or define.

Imagine an auditorium with open seating and the audience entering one at a time. People will in turn make a selection of what in their opinion is the best remaining seat. The order in which the seats are chosen is an indicator of the rank order of the desirability of the individual seats.

As the audience makes its seat selection, a geometric pattern of the occupied seats unfolds, and reveals the boundary of the preferred seats. The perimeters describe the equal desirability curves and outlines the auditorium plan with as many good seats as possible.

The audience choice of seat is recorded by time lapse photography. The data is analysed in a combined computer drawing and mathematics program. A mathematical model has been developed that evaluates the desirability of the seating in an auditorium from the audience point of view.