Confidential Toy Manufacturing Company Case Study

Studio design for a next-generation content production hub in Los Angeles

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Built EnvironmentBuilt Environment

Industry

General Manufacturing
Multi-Use Event Centers

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Architect | MEP

HLW | Arc Engineering

This confidential toy manufacturing company is upgrading its content production capabilities with a new 60,000-square-foot studio hub in Los Angeles. Designed as part of a broader multi-phase campus evolution in El Segundo, the project brings together 10 sound stages, fabrication shops, photo labs, visual effects studios, conferencing areas, green rooms, open office space, and hair and makeup support spaces under one roof. Trinity Consultants is providing acoustic design for the ongoing project, helping create a high-performance production environment that gives the client a far more capable platform for film, photo, and visual content creation than its previous facility.

Vision

The client’s goal was straightforward but ambitious: move out of a facility that no longer supported the way its teams needed to work and create a new studio environment that could keep pace with a much larger content pipeline. The new hub is intended to give the organization stronger, more flexible in-house production capabilities, reducing reliance on outside facilities while creating room for future growth across multiple brands and media formats. What they needed was not just more space, but better-performing space.

That required a highly controlled acoustic environment from the start. With 10 sound stages ranging from small to large, plus fabrication, VFX, and support spaces all sharing a single-story footprint, the project had to accommodate simultaneous activity without compromise. The sound stages needed to function as blank canvases: quiet, dry, and acoustically controlled enough that production teams can build the exact conditions they need rather than fighting the room. Trinity Consultants helped shape that vision into specific performance targets that support real-world content production, not just generic studio language.

Partnership

This project benefited from direct engagement with the people who will actually use the space day to day. Rather than relying only on a filtered chain of project communication, Trinity Consultants worked with HLW and participated in working sessions with the client’s end-user group to understand how the studios would function in practice. Those conversations focused on the questions that matter most in a technically demanding environment: how quiet the rooms need to be, how much sound isolation is required, what kinds of microphones are in play, and how each space will actually be used during production.

That process helped create a valuable feedback loop. Trinity Consultants did not come in with a one-size-fits-all answer. The team listened first, benchmarked the client’s existing facility to understand where it was falling short, and used that baseline to guide recommendations for the new space. This approach made the design process more grounded and collaborative, giving the client clearer visibility into what different design moves would achieve and how those choices aligned with budget, workflow, and long-term goals. The result was a stronger partnership shaped around performance, not assumption.

Services Performed

Trinity Consultants provided acoustic design services for a new studio hub, including benchmarking the existing facility, developing sound isolation strategies, and defining background noise criteria to support high-performance content production. The team also collaborated closely with end users to translate real workflows into practical design solutions, addressing enclosure, HVAC noise, and acoustic challenges across interconnected studio spaces.

Value-Add

One of the most meaningful contributions on this project was establishing a measurable point of comparison before design work advanced too far. By benchmarking the acoustic attributes of the client’s existing facility, Trinity Consultants created a baseline that made future recommendations more useful and more credible. Instead of speaking in abstractions, the team could show what needed to improve, why it mattered, and how the new facility could remove friction from the production process.

The project also presented several technical challenges that required careful coordination. The sound stages sit directly adjacent to one another, placing enormous importance on demising construction and sound isolation. The building’s single-story layout introduced other complexities, including rooftop HVAC, loading dock doors in the façade, and large-format “elephant doors” needed to move production materials in and out of the stages. Each of those elements created potential paths for environmental noise intrusion and acoustic weakness. Trinity Consultants helped address those conditions through enclosure strategy, background noise criteria, and attention to flanking paths through ductwork and other penetrations.

Just as important, the team helped define the kind of room these production spaces needed to be. The goal was not simply to make them quiet, but to make them useful: acoustically dry, absorptive, and controlled enough to serve as a flexible foundation for many different types of content creation. That is where the project’s value really sits. Trinity Consultants is helping the client move from a facility that made the work harder to one that makes the work more seamless.

Quiet doesn’t happen by accident in broadcast and studio spaces. It comes from understanding how sound, structure, and building systems interact in real conditions. When acoustics are considered early and coordinated closely with design and engineering, studios feel controlled, focused, and ready for live production from day one.

Matthew H. Rosenthal | Associate Principal