Scott Rubin, 32
Senior associate at Cerami & Associates
Driven by a passion for music and engineering, Scott Rubin has spent his 11-year career working as an acoustical engineer at Cerami & Associates, helping architects and developers understand how sound will impact their buildings and the business conducted within them.
“The beauty of that is it allows you to use both sides of the brain and it is also a more creative engineering, and allows us to play around with architecture and design but also think logically about solving certain engineering problems,” Rubin said. “It allows me to pursue both passions.”
That ability to combine the science of engineering and the creativity of sound design helped Rubin (and his firm) in the development of the Walt Disney Company’s new New York City headquarters at 7 Hudson Square. The space houses not only some of the company’s corporate employees, but is also where long-running talk show “The View” and other Disney and ABC productions are taped.
In addition to the noisy backdrop of New York City, 7 Hudson Square sits over a subway, which added another acoustical challenge to its development.
“Those different studios are actually in the basement of the building,” Rubin said. “So the most sensitive room is next to the loudest noise source. So we had to figure out how to isolate the building from the subway.”
Isolating a building from a loud city comes down to understanding the environment through site studies and using materials such as rubber, neoprene — a synthetic rubber that is more durable — and springs, he said. “Those types of materials absorb the sound or the vibration, and it absorbs it and doesn’t allow it to transmit from one material to the other,” Rubin said.
The Disney project was just one unique development Rubin has worked on. He was also part of the team on 270 Park Avenue, set to be the new global headquarters for J.P. Morgan Chase.
Going forward, Rubin has his eye on a certain career prize. “My personal Everest is to become a leader at the firm,” he said, “and have my own group, and really be at a leader level, which I am close to.”
