Allied Works wins design competition for National Music Center in Calgary

Since completing a succession of high profile cultural projects in the last few years, such as the Seattle Art Museum expansion and the Museum of Art & Design in New York, Allied Works has seemed to be looking for its next big project. Years have gone by between the aforementioned works and a choice new commission, and the collapsed economy made the wait longer. But now, Allied Works and its leader, architect Brad Cloepfil, have won a competition against some of the world's most acclaimed architects for the right to design and build a striking new building in Calgary for the Cantos Music Foundation.

Allied Works Architecture will design the new $100 million National Music Centre in Calgary. The new center will include a museum as well as education and outreach facilities and performance space.

Cloepfil's firm crafted a five-story building designed as a series of “resonant vessels” or instruments orchestrated by the collections and programs of the new building. The design takes inspiration from the Western landscape, in particular the canyons and mountains of Alberta. “The concept truly captured the heart and soul of this project”, said Andrew Mosker, executive director of the Cantos Music Foundation, in World Architecture News. “Brad and his team will give us an innovative building that fits with Calgary, Alberta, the West and is symbolic of something that is truly uniquely Canadian”.

As the World Architecture News piece noted, as well as a post by Jeff Jahn on PORT, the design seems influenced by the great Louis Kahn, particularly his masterful National Assembly buiding in Bangladesh (pictured below). If so, that shoes the lineage that goes from Kahn to Cloepfil by just one degree of separation. While studying at the University of Oregon, Cloepfil learned under then-professor Thomas Hacker, who had previously worked in Kahn's Philadelphia office. Cloepfil's first job in Portland was later at Hacker's eponymous firm.

Allied Works, which partnered with Calgary firm BKDI, was chosen over some very impressive competition, such as Diller Scofidio+Renfro of New York (the firm that just renovated Pietro Belluschi's Julliard School in NYC), and Pritzker Prize winning French architect Jean Nouvel.

Designing a grand music facility like this may also help position Allied Works for the inevitable day when the Oregon Symphony and other local arts organizations move toward building a new concert hall in Portland - something that has been talked about for nearly a decade.

Comments

[Andy]

Very interesting. I wonder if it'll more forward any quicker than all of the other cultural projects around the world right now that seem to get past the competition/publication phase... and then drop off the face of the planet. Here's hoping for AW!

[thefuture]

Well, whatever happens I hafta say that's one of the most beautiful conceptual models I've seen in a really long time. One of those that'd you'd do in school, but never think you'd get away with in the 'real world'.

I really hope this goes through. And then after that maybe AW will do something similarly awesome in Portland? Maybe?