Project Details
- Project Name
- Tanglewood Linde Center for Music and Learning
- Architect
- William Rawn Associates
- Client/Owner
- Boston Symphony Orchestra
- Project Types
- Cultural
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Awards
- 2021 AIA - National Awards
- Shared by
- Madeleine D'Angelo
- Project Status
- Built
An abridged version of the below paragraph appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of ARCHITECT as part of expanded coverage of the 2021 AIA Interior Architecture Awards.
Boston-based William Rawn Associates got to spend time in the country for its design of the Linde Center for Music and Learning, in Lenox, Mass. The suite of interiors complements the campestral setting of Tanglewood Music Center. Comprising 24,000 square feet across four separate buildings, the scheme furnishes the storied seasonal venue with new spaces for performance, rehearsal, and public programming—all part of an innovative educational initiative operated on site by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Pulling together the whole ensemble is a series of repeated interior thematics—light wood surfaces, broad windows, black or burnished metal fixtures, recessed theatrical lighting, and elegant wall sconces—that turns the procession between buildings, guided by a snaking exterior portico, into a tranquil sequence of architectural encounters. Perhaps most arresting is how the interiors appear from outside and in particular at night, when visitors strolling down the connecting pathway can watch musicians and audiences through the glass façades, bathed in an atmosphere of luminous warmth.
Project Description
This project was named a winner in the 2021 AIA Interior Architecture Awards. From the firm's 2021 AIA Award submission:
The Linde Center for Music and Learning at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s longtime summer home in the Berkshires, was envisioned as a place where new ideas around music could commingle with cultural enrichment. Against the backdrop of a captivating landscape, the center is a cluster of four new buildings that help bridge Tanglewood’s acclaimed music festival and its summer music academy, which provides no-cost fellowships to some of America’s most talented professional musicians.
Connected by a serpentine pathway, the center’s four buildings house Tanglewood’s educational programs, recitals, and lectures, including the Tanglewood Learning Institute. The recently launched program provides classical music patrons extraordinary access to top-tier musicians as they work to hone their craft. Through all of its programs, the center aims to immerse audiences deeper into the process of creating music.
The center is positioned as a vital music incubator through its scale, flexibility, and distance-learning capabilities. Through it, the orchestra has experimented with new concepts and technologies, something that has proven to be particularly important as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced cultural institutions to move the majority of their offerings online.
The center bears the complete Tanglewood experience hallmarks: extraordinary music and the informality of its natural surroundings. Visitors are welcome to attend rehearsals and forge greater connections with both music and the environment. To fit into the scale of Tanglewood, the team organized the buildings around a 100-foot-tall oak. Like all Tanglewood buildings, the new additions are marked with a grand sense of openness, and all open broadly onto the landscape. The team, based on its history of more than 30 years of work at Tanglewood, beginning with the adjacent Seiji Ozawa Hall, continued to build upon the palette of rustic and informal materials.
In a first, all four of the center’s buildings are air conditioned, providing Tanglewood with a facility fit for year-round operation. However, all of the studio and cafe spaces were designed to be ventilated naturally, with operable glass walls and actuator-operated windows that allow them to harness natural airflow.
Since its inception, Tanglewood has represented human wellness through its quest to enrich the soul through music and develop meaningful connections with the landscape. The Linde Center furthers those ideals and firmly establishes the future of Tanglewood and the orchestra.
Project Credits
Acoustics - Kirkegaard Associates
Audio/Visual – Kirkegaard Associates
Engineer: Structural – Lemessurier Consultants
Engineer: MEP – R.G. Vanderweil Engineers, LLP
Engineer: Civil – Foresight Land Services
Landscape Architect – Reed Hilderbrand LLC
Geotechnical Engineer – Vernon Hoffman, PE
Geotechnical Engineer – Gifford Engineering
Lighting – Lam Partners
Theater – NextStage Design
Sustainable Design – The Green Engineer, Inc.
Envelope Consultant – Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
Food Service – Lisa May Foodservice Design
