
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., by Ennead Architects.
Stanford University and Ennead Architects have opened Bing Concert Hall, which will serve as the new home of the university’s music department, as well as Stanford Live, a program that brings performers of all genres to Stanford. Situated within Stanford’s campus arts district, the 112,365-square-foot Bing Concert Hall reinterprets existing campus architecture with a more contemporary expression by employing full-height, sliding curtainwall systems. The 842-seat performance venue also houses rehearsal spaces and a music library, and boasts sail-shaped, variable acoustic tuning devices; foot-thick concrete walls isolate the hall from outside noise, while angled acoustic wall reflectors and a double-curved ceiling reflector optimize sound within the hall. Light wells surround the central, oval-shaped main concert hall, allowing daylight to penetrate deep into the lobby area. Terraces on the north and south sides of the hall provide outdoor rehearsal spaces for performers, and gathering space for events, respectively, while the building forms visual connections with the rest of the campus arts buildings along its east-west axis, which terminates at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, also designed by Ennead. Stanford University hopes that this addition will contribute to its Arts Initiative, which aims to refocus education around arts programming.
For more details and images of Bing Concert Hall, visit ARCHITECT's Project Gallery.
Ennead Architects created a fly-through video of Bing Concert Hall, which you can view below: