FEATURE | National Music Centre
Increased Tempo
Excitement builds as the National Music Centre comes to life
By Melanie Franner
Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre, will be another iconic building that is associated with Calgary, as well as showcasing the city is serious about celebrating music in Canada.
The Canadian music industry has its eyes – and ears – on the city of Calgary. That’s because Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre (NMC), is setting the stage as an iconic piece of architecture. Inspired by the natural landscape of Western Canada, the curved geometric shape of the building is readily becoming apparent. “The story of music in Canada is a big one and we needed a gesture equal to that,” says Andrew Mosker, president and CEO at NMC. “A building like this not only captures people’s attention, it shows that we’re serious about celebrating music in Canada.” The NMC and Bell entered into a 12year, $10-million partnership to support construction of the new facility. The
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money will go towards the total $168 million price tag. “NMC is an example of how Calgary is growing as a metropolitan centre and expanding our cultural institutions,” says Jason North, project director, CANA Management Ltd. “The NMC will be another iconic building that is associated with Calgary. For CANA, being able to help revitalize the East Village district into a vibrant neighbourhood anchored by inspiring cultural institutions with remarkable architecture, like the NMC, is a very gratifying experience. A complicated project The NMC is anything but a simple design, as seen in the experienced construction team needed to bring it to fruition.
“With the complex architecture on the project, teamwork has been essential to finding solutions to the unique conditions and challenging geometry,” says North. “The nature of the building design is that detailing and constructability reviews are not possible in the traditional sense because there are so many unique conditions around the building. As one example, in order to properly construct the building geometry, the design team provided over 800,000 layout points to CANA from the design model in a format useful for the construction team. In another example, 3D modelling was used extensively to route pipe runs across the separate open areas of the building in an architecturally acceptable manner. In both of these cases, the