Sports & Entertainment- Project of the Year

The Music Center at Strathmore
Montgomery County, Md.

For more than 25 years, Strathmore Hall has hosted many of metropolitan Washington's most memorable cultural events.

But few match the synchronicity required to create the Music Center at Strathmore, a $100 million, 192,000-sq.-ft. performance facility that combines a world-class 2,000-seat concert hall with a 21,000-sq.-ft. education center that will provide instruction and rehearsal space for the many of the region's youth and community music programs.

Funded jointly by the county and the state of Maryland, the Music Center at Strathmore will also serve as a second home to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which will present more than 30 concerts there each year.

Unlike other performance facilities that must accommodate a wide range of cultural uses, the Music Center at Strathmore is designed to emphasize music. Inside the centerpiece 21,982-sq.-ft. concert hall, three levels of cantilevered balconies enclose the lower seating area and 3,075-sq.-ft. concert platform on all sides, creating an intimate "room for music" while also meeting the discriminating acoustical requirements of a world-class performance hall.

Removable sidewalls alongside the stage will provide access to wing space, allowing the 68-ft.-wide downstage area to be expanded by another 12 ft. to accommodate modern dance and ballet performances.

There is little room for error in performance facilities such as the Music Center at Strathmore. A minor change to the types and location of materials, physical layout and ancillary systems can make a difference in what audiences hear, and more important, what they experience.

The project team's architect, contractor and specialty consultants collaborated to make the concrete work for the concert hall's structural system a design-build "miniproject" within the overall design-bid-build program.

Sixteen-in.-thick, cast-in-place concrete walls layered with an additional 3 in. of stone veneer isolate the concert hall from other spaces. The walls are fitted with adjustable acoustic draping behind bronze metal grilles that maintain a consistent angled pattern from floor to ceiling.

In addition, a bank of 43 individually controlled acrylic reflector panels will hang above the stage and highlight the long, graceful curve of the roof, which slopes upward from the stage to the back of the seating area to force sound out across the audience.

Sensitivity to sound quality is evident elsewhere in the Music Center. The demising walls separating other sensitive spaces are typically built of two independent walls, each of which runs to the slab above and is completely sealed. Most of these walls are made of concrete masonry units that are grouted solid.

In addition, all mechanical systems in the building, such as air handlers, have been isolated from the structure with springs and neoprene pads. The ductwork is encased in gypsum wall board to prevent sound transmission through the mechanical system.

The project team had to successfully integrate the Music Center's 11-acre site - punctuated by an 80-ft., 1:4 grade terminating in a wetlands stream - into its largely pastoral surroundings.

Although the constrained site left little room during the construction phase, building the structure into the hill actually helps disguise its height and minimize visual impacts on the namesake Georgian Revival mansion just 300 ft. away. The five-level gently curved limestone-clad reinforced concrete walls are 108 ft. high, yet remain entirely below the roofline of Strathmore Hall.

In addition, a 65-ft.-high curtain wall of fritted glass allows the Strathmore grounds to serve as a scenic backdrop to the 9,500-sq. ft. main lobby.

One judge said the Music Center at Strathmore is "an amazing structure, a complicated design on a difficult site."

Construction was scheduled to conclude in December with a three-day series of concerts for nearly 10,000 Montgomery County Public School second-graders, followed by the first official concert hall performance on Feb. 5.

The education center will accommodate a full range of uses and programs sponsored by the National Philharmonic, the Washington Performing Arts Society, the Levine School of Music and the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras. Separate, acoustically isolated two-story rehearsal rooms will serve local student and chamber orchestras and choruses.

The education center also includes nine music instruction and practice rooms; a dance studio with sprung floors and mirrored walls; two multipurpose classrooms for seminars, workshops and early childhood education; and an electronic music lab. Other support spaces include a 92-seat reception room, 140-seat café, banquet facilities and gift shop.

Owner: "Montgomery County, MD"
Operator: "Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc."
Owner's Project Manager: Tishman Construction Corporation of DC
Design Architect: "William Rawn Associates, Architects Inc."
Associate Architect: Grimm & Parker Architects
Acoustician: Kirkegaard Associates
Theater Designer: Theater Projects Consultants
General Contractor: Clark Construction
Stonework: Manganaro Midatlantic
Electrical Contractor: Truland Systems. Corp.
Masonry Contractor: United Masonry

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