Music Performance Building University of Wisconsin-Madison Curtain Wall Design in Wisconsin

This music performance facility project for the Mead Witter School of Music is a significant component of the University’s East Campus Development Plan. The project will provide a 650-seat concert hall, a 330-seat recital hall, and a large rehearsal room.A $55 million, 80,000-square-foot Hamel Music Center was planned at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Strang reached out to raSmith to provide structural engineering based on the staff’s unique qualifications in reverberation and acoustics design.

Unique Windows 

People taking note of music hall construction and its surprising features?

But they’re not windows, explains the director of campus planning and landscape architecture. They’re sound chambers. And it’s just one of the features that will help the Hamel Music Center hit all the right notes.

“It’s going to be amazing,” Brown says. “The architecture and design is something we haven’t seen on this campus. It will really create a major gateway feature to campus.”

The so-called “windows” of the building are part of the acoustical treatment system inside the performance hall. They connect to large chambers on each side of the hall. The round openings allow sound into the chambers behind and provide beneficial reverberance to the concert hall depending on the type of musical ensemble on stage.

“The acoustic considerations for this building have driven everything,” says project manager Pete Heaslett of UW–Madison Capital Planning and Development.Both the rehearsal and recital halls were designed to have a unique exterior precast skin that has an accordion-like appearance. Acoustical isolation of the three halls from the remainder of the building was paramount in the structural design of the project.

Structural Glass Wall Design Company

Features of the new building will include a glass-walled lobby, clerestory windows in the recital hall, and a glassed-in corner of the rehearsal hall to usher in light and allow passersby to see ongoing rehearsals.

“This really is a once in a career kind of project,” Heaslett says.

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