Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center at Veterans Memorial Auditorium

OPN Architects led the 2010-2012 renovation that converted Des Moines' 1954 Veterans Memorial Auditorium into the Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center, part of the Iowa Events Center. The project removed the auditorium's original 7,200 seats and built an entirely new upper level in their place, adding a 28,730-square-foot ballroom - the largest in the state - along with 25 new meeting rooms.

A field of Sky Acoustics cloud panels hangs independently from the ballroom's curved roof structure on individual cable runs, taming reverberation across a room built to hold thousands without letting the acoustic treatment compete visually with the space. Lit from below, the panels shift with the room's event lighting, here washed in blue against the ballroom's wood-paneled stage wall.