Under construction
Gehry Partners, LLP
New World Symphony
Miami Beach, Florida
The building will be an experimental generator for new ideas in music education and performance.
View Completed New World Symphony feature.
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
The New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy, will celebrate moving into its first purpose-built home in its 23-year history. The new campus, to open on January 25, 2011, marks a new era for the institution founded by Michael Tilson Thomas.
The building, conceived as a laboratory for music education and performance, is located adjacent to a 2.5 acre public park into which the New World Symphony will extend its programming.
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Set in a soaring, 80 foot high glass wall, a spectacular and dynamic entrance will lead into an atrium featuring playful, geometric forms, a high-tech box office, and a public bar with an undulating, green-tinted titanium canopy.
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
The centerpiece of the building will be a 757 seat natural acoustic performance space featuring large, distinctive sail-like acoustical surfaces that will come alive with theatrical lighting, videos and other projected imagery.
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Flexible seating and staging will offer a range of possibilities for bringing an exhilarating sense of immediacy and intimacy to the concert experience.
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Stage - Full Seating
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Full Stage - Collapsed Seating
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Stage Lift - Collapsed Seating
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Flat Floor - Collapsed Seating
Combined with acoustically designed practice rooms, rehearsal spaces and technology studios, all wired for the use of Internet2, the new building will enable activities ranging from one-on-one teaching to recording sessions to webcasts reaching a global audience.
A rooftop terrace will feature a pavilion reception space, a music library and a patrons lounge surrounded by an oasis-like garden. Live "wallcasts" onto the building's 7,000 square foot exterior projection wall will enable live transmission of concerts from inside the building.
Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
"The move to our new home marks a new era: a new way of relating to our audiences, a new way of learning, and a new way of thinking about classical music in the 21st century. I join the talented current and future Fellows of the New World Symphony in great anticipation of making music and exploring new possibilities in this wonderful space, during the opening season and for many years to come."
Michael Tilson Thomas
Commissioned by the City of Miami Beach, the public park that will be adjacent to the New World Symphony building was designed by the Dutch landscape architecture firm West 8, and an accompanying 557 space parking structure was designed by Gehry Partners, LLP.
The campus will be a new cultural landmark for South Florida and the heart of a redevelopment project aimed at injecting fresh vitality into South Beach, the architecturally historic district of Miami Beach.
"The design of this building has been a fascinating process of creative collaboration, and could not have come about in this way except for the lifelong friendship I've shared with Michael Tilson Thomas. I hope that the spirit of engagement that brought together Michael's strong musical vision and my own experience will live on in the building's many spaces through the creativity and experimentation of the New World Symphony and the openness of audiences to new musical experiences."
Frank Gehry
Sketch courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Sketch
Total area: 100,000 square feet
Client: New World Symphony
Design Architect: Gehry Partners, LLP
Design partner: Frank Gehry
Project Designer: Craig Webb
Project Manager: Kristin Ragins
Project Architect: Brad Winkeljohn
Project Team:
Luciana Vidal
Shikha Doogar
Rolando Mendoza
Dan Sokolosky
Petar Vrcibradic
Curtis Christensen
Molly Farr
Leon Cheng
Vartan Chalikian
Lisa Cage
Armando Solano
Acoustical Design: Asuhisa Toyota/Nagata Acoustics
Gehry Partners arcspace features
May 17, 2010