New Boston Conservatory Building Opens With Dual-Purpose, State-of-the-Art Acoustical Technology

BOSTON, Sept. 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Boston Conservatory, the oldest performing arts Conservatory of its kind in the nation, recently opened its new studio building located at 132 Ipswich Street.  A collaboration between Handel Architects LLP and Utile, Inc., the team worked to design a ground-up structure to house studio practice space suited for the school's curriculum. The building houses a large orchestra rehearsal space, two dance studios, teaching studios, multipurpose rooms and practice rooms for the instruction of movement, voice, instrument, and orchestra ensemble.

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"We designed this building to help give this nearly 150-year-old institution an even stronger presence in the city of Boston," said Blake Middleton FAIA, lead designer and a partner at Handel Architects LLP. "The brick echoes the architecture of the neighborhood, while also creating a state-of-the-art learning environment for its students and faculty. In a sense it is an 'inhabited billboard.'"

Maximizing the program space on an extremely tight budget was a challenge, and required highly efficient planning. Interaction between students and faculty, many of different disciplines, is promoted by channeling everyone through the same door and into a vertical common space, which is celebrated with a three-story open atrium. The main 3,250 square-foot orchestra rehearsal studio takes the primary position, with two dance studios above with great views of the Boston skyline and natural light. Practice rooms and teaching studios surround these on three floors.

The building is sited on tight quarters in an unorthodox location for a noise sensitive building: the Massachusetts Turnpike is nearby, as well as a commuter rail line, and Fenway Park is a block away.

"By employing 'box within a box' construction, and leveraging the density of the masonry walls, the design team was able to suppress the outside noise for those spaces that required it," said Middleton.

"The design solution was inspired by both the vitality and challenges of a site located in the heart of a major U.S. city," said Mimi Love at Utile. "We had to blend in with the urban fabric, right next to Fenway Park, while creating an iconic building that would represent the values of the school. Our team also had to find the right strategy of construction systems and materials to overcome acoustical issues from baseball games and traffic from the Massachusetts Turnpike."

About Handel Architects LLP:

Handel Architects LLP is an architecture, interior design, and planning firm with offices in New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong. The core of the practice engages all aspects of urban design – political, economic, and aesthetic – to create architecture that makes measurable and sustainable improvements to cities. With projects in major U.S. cities, Asia, and South America, the firm has produced highly acclaimed work in Boston since 1997, including the Ritz-Carlton Hotel & Residences on Boston Common, the renovation of the landmarked Filene's Building, and the Millennium Tower now under construction at Downtown Crossing. In 2010 The Boston Conservatory completed a new Performing Arts facility nearby on Hemenway Street, also designed by Handel Architects.

Handel Architects has won numerous design awards and is regularly featured in architectural journals and design publications. The firm's clients range from private developers to publicly funded organizations, city agencies, institutional, and not-for-profit groups.

About Utile, Inc.:

Utile is a Boston-based design firm built like a think tank. The firm thrives on solving complex problems in intelligent and pragmatic ways. From theoretical issues that frame policy to the practical implementation of architectural commissions, Utile develops a rigorous research-based approach for finding the best solutions.

The firm's work is not driven by aesthetics, but by a shared interest in doing deep-dive research focused on the cultural, social, regulatory, and environmental issues inherent in a given design problem. Utile finds opportunities for design innovation by uncovering these latent issues and fully leveraging and synthesizing them. As a result, Utile doesn't focus on a particular project type, but rather commissions that require comprehensive research and collaborative engagement with their clients.  

About The Boston Conservatory:

Founded in 1867, The Boston Conservatory is an independent private college with fully accredited graduate and undergraduate programs in music, dance and theater, training exceptional young performing artists for careers that enrich and transform the human experience. Known for its multidisciplinary environment and deep community engagement, The Boston Conservatory is internationally recognized as an innovative leader among conservatory programs, focused on elevating and celebrating every aspect of the performing arts, and presenting more than 600 performances each year. The institution has established itself as an important voice in the movement to make all forms of performing arts a more visible and valued dimension of communities here and abroad.

SOURCE Utile, Inc.