New York practice to work with Sheppard Robson on Barbican Centre for Music
The New York practice behind the city’s High Line park has been picked to design a new home for the London Symphony Orchestra.
It will be Diller Scofidio & Renfro’s first UK project.
The practice beat teams including Foster & Partners, Amanda Levete, Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano to create a concept for the new Centre for Music, earmarked for the current site of Powell & Moya’s Museum of London, at the south-west corner of the Barbican Centre.
DS&R will work with Sheppard Robson to create proposals for the venue – estimated to have a pricetag of up to £250m – for project partners the Barbican, the LSO and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
The Centre for Music’s selection panel, which included architect Eva Jiricna, LSE professor of urban studies Ricky Burdett, and LSO music director designate Simon Rattle, said DS&R’s “visionary ideas” had stood out from a field of excellent submissions.
“The panel felt Diller Scofidio & Renfro most clearly met the vision and ambition of this project, utilising their experience of creating inspiring new spaces for culture to present a proposal that delivers a world-class concert hall in an outstanding new building, as part of the re-imagination of a key area of the City of London,” they said.
DS&R partner Elizabeth Diller, who will be leading on the centre’s design, said the practice was honoured to have been picked from a “stellar group of architects” for what would be the practice’s first UK building.
“The new building will meet the needs of artists and audiences today with a keen eye toward the future,” she said.
“It will be sensitive to the inherited character of the Barbican and its vital role in Culture Mile while directly engaging the contemporary urban life of the city. We aspire to make a hub where people want to spend their time, with or without a ticket.”
DS&R and Sheppard Robson will be working with a team including BuroHappold, Aecom, Nagata Acoustics, and theatre consultant Charcoalblue to work up a concept design for the Centre for Music for submission to the City of London Corporation by December 2018, as part of a detailed business case for the project.
Catherine McGuinness, policy chairman at the City of London Corporation, said she expected the Centre for Music to become an “iconic landmark” in the authority’s Culture Mile vision, stretching from Moorgate to Farringdon, with a new Museum of London designed by Stanton Williams and Asif Khan at Smithfield at its western end.
DS&R’s cultural projects include the under-construction Shed in New York, work on the Lincoln Centre campus and The Broad contemporary art museum in Los Angeles.
The business case development work being undertaken for the Centre for Music is being funded with £2.5m from the City of London Corporation.
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