National Music Centre designed for Calgary
July 12, 2011
By
Canadian Consulting Engineer
The final design for a National Music Centre was revealed in Calgary on June 22.
The final design for a National Music Centre was revealed in Calgary on June 22.
Andrew Mosker, the president and CEO of the National Music Centre, said that they were “ecstatic” with the design results and with the experience they have had working with Allied Works Architecture and the project team.
The music centre is to be built around the historical King Edward Hotel at 4th Street SE and 9th Avenue in Calgary. The 1905 hotel became a “hotbed of blues music in Canada” in the years before it closed in 2004, said a press release.
Slated to open in 2014, the $132-million, 135,000-sq.ft. new music centre project will be built around the hotel with additions that include a two-storey bridge spanning across 4th Street SE. The bridge will be used as a performing space and serve as a visual gateway into a revitalized East Village, which the city wants to develop as a major cultural and music district.
The facilities will include a radio broadcast studio, recording studios, a 300-seat performance space and 23,000 square feet of exhibition galleries that will show collections such as the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio (a studio in a truck), the Canadian Music Hall of Fame Collection and the Canadian Country Museum Hall of Fame Collection.
Allied Works Architecture is a U.S. firm that won an architectural competition for the project two years ago, working in collaboration with GEC Architecture of Calgary. The design of the building is described as “based on a concept of resonant vessels … celebrating the western Canadian landscape informed by the canyons of the Rocky Mountains, the hoodoos of southern Alberta and the vast open spaces of the prairies.
The design team includes: Read Jones Christoffersen and KPFF (structural), Stantec Consulting and ARUP (mechanical), Stebnicki + Partners and ARUP (electrical), DA Watt (civil).
While the project has funding commitments from three levels of government, the centre has embarked on a fundraising campaign to raise the full $132-million price tag.
