Project Description
Award
Portland, Ore.– and New York–based Allied Works Architecture won an international competition to convert an existing hotel, which dates to 1905, and an adjacent half-acre parcel in Calgary’s East Village into a new music education, exhibition, and performance venue. The plan calls for the complete restoration of the King Edward Hotel, which houses one of Calgary’s oldest music clubs, to its former glory. The new spaces are housed in a series of nine concrete-and-steel towers that are clad in terra-cotta and metal panels. The towers curve as they rise from the ground until they join in a canopy that arches over a city street. Juror Sasa Radulovic appreciated the project’s “continuum of exploration between solid and void,” as these spaces merge and form the larger 160,000-square-foot campus. New gallery spaces will display more than 2,000 objects representing Canada’s musical heritage, and a new recording studio and radio station will occupy the towers adjacent to the restored hotel. But those hoping to reserve a room in the thick of the action at the National Music Centre will be disappointed—the hotel is being transformed not into guest rooms, but rather into apartments for artists-in-residence. —Katie Gerfen