Country Music Hall of Fame

Country Music Hall of Fame


From its conception in 1961 to the opening of its Music Row home in 1967, its move to downtown Nashville in 2001 through the April 2014 opening of its new facilities that more than doubled its size, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has had a continuing core mission: to shed light on country music’s evolving history, breadth, practitioners and flavors, and to honor them all.

The new 10,000-square-foot exhibit space, which comprises the ACM Gallery and the Fred and Dinah Gretsch Family Gallery, is a key public element of the Hall’s $100 million expansion. Designed by Nashville’s Tuck Hinton Architects, the expansion extends seamlessly from the existing Hall, increasing by 210,000 feet in total the previous 140,000-foot space.

A new Taylor Swift Education Center, funded by contributions from Ms. Swift and the National Endowment for the Arts, increases to six from one the classrooms available for the Hall’s “Words and Music” songwriting classes for Nashville area schoolchildren; a new dedicated Distance Learning Lab means schools from across the globe can arrange for similar experiences.

The state-of-the-art, strikingly modern, horseshoe-shaped 800-seat CMA Theater is used for major Hall programs, and civic and private events. The space is highly adaptable, providing the perfect setting for more than conference performances: general sessions, sales meetings, television broadcasts, press conferences, and other functions.

  • Architect: HKS
  • Arch. of Record: Tuck Hinton Architects
  • Completion Year: 2014
  • Location: Nashville, Tennessee
  • Acoustician: Akustiks
  • Capacity: 800 seats

Awards
  • LEED Silver certified

Links

Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Art Museum – Pacific Film Archive


Forward-looking and versatile, the new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will be a dynamic and engaging place to experience our diverse art, film, performance, and education programs, and to access our extensive collection and archives.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s design for the new BAM/PFA combines the 1939 concrete Art Deco-style former printing plant, unoccupied since 2004, with a new metal-clad structure. The new design creates a cohesive and visually arresting space for art, film, education, civic interaction, and administration. Plans call for the industrial building—currently a single-story, skylighted structure with a three-story administrative wing at its east end—to house the museum’s collection and exhibition galleries, a thirty-two-seat screening room, museum store, learning center, K–12 education areas, community gallery, and offices.

The new structure, extending between the corner of Oxford and Addison Streets and the museum’s Center Street facade, includes the 230-seat PFA Theater, Library and Film Study Center, special event space, collection study area, café, and nonpublic areas. The facility is thus defined by two primary and integrated components: the imaginatively repurposed older building and a complementary, forward-thinking multipurpose structure.

  • Client: Berkeley Art Museum
  • Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
  • Arch. of Record: EHDD
  • Completion Year: 2015
  • Location: Berkeley, California
  • Building Size: 82,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 230 seats

Awards
  • 2016 AIA New York Design Awards, Merit Award – Architecture

Links

Western Connecticut State University School of Visual and Performing Arts

Western Connecticut State University

School of Visual and Performing Arts


For years, the Theatre Department at WCSU has been doing terrific work under far-from-ideal conditions. With the opening of the Visual and Performing Arts Center, teachers, performers, directors, designers, and technicians finally have a facility equal to their talents.

The Center’s facilities include: Scenery and costume shops for instruction and construction. A large rehearsal space, which can also serve as a black box studio theatre for informal performances. Smaller rehearsal spaces for scene work and classes. The department’s centerpiece — and companion to the Music Department’s Concert Hall — is the 350-seat proscenium theatre. It has an ideal audience capacity — a decent size, but not too large. An otherwise wonderful student performance might be lost in a larger space. With its balcony and side seating galleries, the theatre is designed to foster a dynamic, intimate relationship between the performer and the audience.

  • Client: Western Connecticut State University
  • Architect: Holzman Moss Bottino
  • Completion Year: 2014
  • Location: Danbury, Connecticut
  • Acoustician: Jaffe Holden
  • Building Size: 130,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 350 seats

Awards

  • 2015 Connecticut Magazine, Best Of Connecticut Award
  • 2013 CFSEI Design Excellence and Construction Innovation Award

Links

BLUEBARN Theatre

BLUEBARN Theatre


BLUEBARN Theatre is a small, artisanal, hand-made theatre company in downtown Omaha, NE. After reading “The Neutrality Trap,” the article by Josh Dachs about studio theaters in the January 2012 issue of American Theater Magazine, AD Susan Clement-Toberer decided to get in touch with FDA — and has been working together with us since then.

With the resurgence of real estate prices in downtown Omaha and the deterioration of the space BLUEBARN has rented and improved, they decided to try to build a home of their own that they could own. The total project budget was limited to $6 million and the building to just under 15,000 GSF.

At the same time, it was critical to maintain the special character of the BLUEBARN, and not sterilize out all the things that made it special to visit and work in. The upstage wall opens onto a rear “porchyard” that will serve as an outdoor event space, shop area, and an opportunity for alternate staging both inside and out. Their lobby features ceramics made by the AD’s husband, handmade serving counters, and an amazing collection of beautiful artist-made show posters. These two ideas — a unique hand-crafted experience for a very low budget — are what have led our thinking during the design process.

  • Client: BLUEBARN Theatre
  • Architect: Min|Day
  • Completion Year: 2015
  • Location: Omaha, Nebraska
  • Building Size: 15,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 99 seats

Awards
  • 2017 ACEC Nebraska Engineering Excellence Award, Merit (MEP)
  • 2016 IES, International Merit Award
  • 2016 IES, International Illuminance Award
  • 2016 ACSA Faculty Design Award
  • 2016 AIA San Francisco Special Commendation for Urban Design
  • 2016 AIA Nebraska Honor Award for Architecture
  • 2016 AIA Central States Merit Award for Rebar Wall (detail)

Links

Columbia University, Lenfest Center for the Arts

Columbia University

Lenfest Center for the Arts

Photo Credit: Frank Oudeman & Davis Brody Bond


The Lenfest Center for the Arts plays a central role in the Manhattanville campus and in the life of the University. This facility, designed by Renzo Piano, is more than a beautiful building containing an art gallery, a film screening room, a presentation space, and a performance space: it serves as a hub for the creation of new works and the refinement of works-in-progress across various media, featuring exhibitions, theatrical performances, symposia, and lectures that present new artistic voices and perspectives from around the globe. The resources made available by the center also strengthen Columbia’s longstanding ties to the vibrant local arts community based in Harlem, generating partnerships with talented artists in northern Manhattan and throughout New York City.

FDA has designed an up to 120-seat flexible studio theatre and a 150-seat film screening room for the School of the Arts.

  • Client: Columbia University
  • Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
  • Arch. of Record: Davis Brody Bond
  • Completion Year: 2016
  • Location: New York, New York
  • Acoustician: Arup
  • Capacity: 150 seats

Links

Robin Williams Center for Media and Entertainment

Robin Williams Center For Media And Entertainment


Situated directly across the street from the Roundabout Theater Company/Studio 54, the 4,000-square-foot, 25-foot-high facility houses a state-of-the-art screening room with cinema-style seating, green room and lobby, and is also home to workshops, seminars, and free professional programs for New York union performers.

The multifunctional facility is the second and final phase of the SAG Foundation’s New York Actors Center. That space, located at 1900 Broadway, opened in May 2014 and features a computer lab, voice-over lab and recording facility that includes a main recording booth with an attached classroom and solo booth.

  • Client: Screen Actors Guild Foundation
  • Architect: Rogers Partners Architects+Urban Designers
  • Completion Year: 2016
  • Location: New York, New York
  • Building Size: 4,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 154 seats

Links

National Music Centre | Studio Bell

National Music Centre of Canada, Studio Bell


The National Music Center of Canada is an entirely new cultural institution dedicated to the music of Canada in all of its forms. It is at once museum, performance hall, interactive music education center, recording studio, broadcast center, and exhibition of the Cantos Music Foundation’s growing collection. Sited opposite the Stampede Grounds in Calgary’s historic East Village, the new NMC, along with the restored King Edward Hotel, revitalizes the district. The project marks the first stage of a new music district in the historic heart of the city.

The first floor houses a live performance venue, called Canada Music Square, along with interactive displays that provide an overview of the centre.

The second storey houses the main performance hall, which overlooks the lobby and serves as the building’s programmatic and structural center. With flexible seating and a movable acoustic wall, the concert hall can be closed for intimate performances and be fully opened to the lobby and circulation spaces, filling them with music.

  • Client: Cantos Foundation
  • Architect: Allied Works Architects
  • Completion Year: 2016
  • Location: Calgary, Alberta
  • Capacity: 300 seats

Links

University of Iowa | Voxman School of Music

University of Iowa | Voxman School of Music


The site of the Voxman School of Music lies at an important boundary between the campus and the Iowa City downtown core, intersecting the academic and urban experiences. The pattern of streets and open spaces in the surrounding mixed-use district extends directly into the building’s interior, creating a dense, vibrant creative environment.

A complex program of musical education spaces is arranged on six floors. Three main public gathering areas – a student commons, a performance and rehearsal lobby, and an atrium – are linked by porous, daylit circulation volumes. The 700-seat concert hall with 200-seat recital hall are the primary performance venues. The concert hall ceiling features a suspended theatroacoustic system, which utilizes digital fabrication and parametric modeling tools to unify acoustic and theatrical equipment. The intricate latticework provides strategic openings for speakers, stage lighting, house lighting, fire sprinklers and acoustic transparency.

  • Client: University of Iowa
  • Architect: LMN Architects
  • Arch. of Record: Neumann Monson
  • Completion Year: 2016
  • Location: Iowa City, Iowa
  • Acoustician: Jaffe Holden Acoustics
  • Building Size: 184,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 700 seats

Awards
  • 2013 Architizer – Finalist, Architecture + Sound

Links

Media

National Museum of African American History and Culture

National Museum of African American History and Culture


Occupying the last available space on the National Mall, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is situated prominently between the National Museum of American History and 15th Street, next to the Washington Monument. When it opens to the public in 2016, the museum will be a centerpiece venue for ceremonies and performances, as well as a primary exhibition space for African American history and culture.

FDA is responsible for the planning and design of a 370-seat auditorium for NMAAHC. Conceived as a true multipurpose room, the theatre features motorized rigging, variable acoustics banners, and a complete inventory of LED theatrical lighting fixtures on automated lighting battens.

After Oprah gave an extraordinary gift to the NMAAHC’s capital campaign in 2013, the Smithsonian Institution announced that it would name the room the Oprah Winfrey Theatre.

  • Client: The Smithsonian Institution
  • Architect: Freelon Adjaye Bond / SmithGroup
  • Completion Year: 2016
  • Location: Washington, Dist of Columbia
  • Lighting: Fisher Marantz Stone
  • Acoustician: SMW
  • Capacity: 370 seats

Awards
  • Gold MUSE Award For Interactive Exhibits
  • LEED Gold certification in progress

Links

Articles

Media

Public Hotel Arts Club

Public Hotel Arts Club

Photo Credit: Public Hotel


The Public Hotel builds on Ian Schrager’s Studio 54 of forty years ago, a nighttime renaissance, and a cultural, social, event and party machine. Public Arts is a cutting-edge, progressive and avant-garde multi-media performance space like no other. A new dimension and home to adventurous artists, ideas and people, the space will offer the most innovative programming including everything from film screenings to musical performances, rotating art exhibitions to product launches, open mic night to comedy night, as well as late night hot sweaty dancing!


  • Client: Ian Schrager
  • Architect: Bonetti/Kozerski Studio
  • Completion Year: 2017
  • Location: New York, New York
  • Capacity: 84 seats

Links

Media

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