The adaptive re-use project was inserted into a two-story commercial office building with low ceiling heights and outdated structural and building systems. Following the same footprint, the building’s height was increased and it was rebuilt within the former walls. The program called for state-of-the-art music composition and recording, audio production and postproduction studios with lounge areas. A dense layout of individual studios for multiple tenants required careful acoustic planning.
The building design is conceived as a starting point for further developments and includes efforts at multiple scales to build a cohesive campus and to create a sustainable and environmentally sensitive neighborhood while reinforcing the strong social and artistic networking aspects within the group of users. The design attempts to create a unified identity for the company and its artists, while preserving the varying scales and character of the different buildings, typical for the eclectic neighborhood. Materials reflect the industrial heritage of the area but their detailing and applications hint at the building’s contemporary use.
A large skylight over the central hallway is at the center of the design, offering relief from the intense process of creating music for films and television in the windowless and hermetically sealed studios.
A glass screen for shading and privacy, with a fritted partial handwritten Mozart score, enlarged to abstraction, is placed in front of the west-facing lounge on the second floor. The pattern continues on the glass below and may be extended across several adjacent buildings in future expansions.
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