2016 Best of Design Award for Adaptive Reuse: National Sawdust

At its core, National Sawdust is a retooling of the 18th-century chamber hall model as an incubator for new music. Described by The New York Times as “the city’s most vital new-music hall,” its design is characterized by the insertion of a highly articulated crystalline form into the rough brick envelope of a former sawdust factory. The design of this state-of-the-art performance and recording space allows the eponymous nonprofit to achieve its mission of supporting new musicians and composers on their way to viable and sustainable careers. In addition to the chamber hall, the project includes a two-story restaurant and lobby-bar.

Unveiled > An Acoustic Renewal in Brooklyn by Bureau V

Via The Architect’s Newspaper, written by Matt Shaw.

Brooklyn-based architecture practice Bureau V unleashed a spectacular design for the Original Music Workshop, a new non-profit arts organization which will open in 2013 with a wide range of musical programming, from classical to jazz to experimental sound. Located in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the performance center was designed in collaboration with engineering gurus Arup and features state of the art acoustical technologies.

Like any good construction in Brooklyn these days, the building is a high-tech, state-of-the-art renovation of a disused industrial building on Wythe and North 6th streets, just one block from the East River. In this case, it’s an acoustic performance center with a series of variable acoustic treatments that allow the space to be tuned to specific instrumentation using acoustically isolated box-in-box construction, which minimizes background noise to studio levels inside the graffitied, hollowed-out remains of a sawdust factory. The result is a sublime collision of new and old: technology and ruin, progress and history, refinement and grit.

Bureau V principal Peter Zuspan explained that OMW came to them with a “two-fold request: the space needed to be both acoustically superior and a comfortable and visually compelling space, a departure from the standard black box theater.” The acoustically-driven, geometrically complex chamber hall will accomodate 170 chairs, or approximately 350 people standing. “The space is small enough to truly listen, while large enough to foster a sense of community,” said Bureau V principal Alexander Pincus. Because of its acoustical performance features, the space can double as a recording studio for up to 70 performers.

Bureau V: The AntiPopUp

Via The Architect's Newspaper, written by Matt Chaban:

There has been so much talk in recent years over the confluence of fashion and architecture, we won’t attempt to add to the “discourse” accept to note that Fashion Week is ending today and with it a number of cool and interesting installations around town. One of particular note was created by our friends at Bureau V—two Asymptote alums and a former DSRer—who have now made their third installation for designer Mary Ping and her Slow and Steady Wins the Race brand.

We’re not exactly sure what’s going on here, as one of the principals sent over this nice photo in reference to a separate email, but Style.com puts it thusly: “[It] uses the idea of the still life to, as Ping puts it, ‘react to the temporality of the pop-up, and go back to an older tradition of talking about objects.’” If you hurry, you can still catch the installation and the objects thereon—some designed by Ping—some merely selected by her, through tomorrow at Saatchi & Saatchi’s ground floor events space at 275 Hudson Street.