University of Memphis - Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center
archimania with Fleming Architects
The new Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center at the University of Memphis expands the music school’s instructional areas and provides a multi-function performance hall to be used by the School of Music and community partners. In addition to providing unique social and exchange spaces for students, faculty, and community, the Center contains practice rooms, teaching studios, recording studios, and Orchestral, Jazz, and Choral rehearsal rooms. These state-of-the-art spaces are designed using leading edge acoustical, theatrical, and audiovisual criteria. Positioned at a key site where the northern edge of the University campus meets the surrounding city fabric, the Center will serve as a visible connection point between the School of Music, the University, and the larger arts community.
The Rudi Scheidt School of Music is a regional leader in music education and had outgrown is current facilities. A plan to add rehearsal, practice and performance spaces led to the University’s concept of extending the campus northward and creating a music campus that spanned across Central Avenue, giving more visibility to the school within the community. The new Center creates spaces for learning and engagement and triples the audience the school can entertain at one time, in addition to providing a venue that functions as a concert hall and an opera house.
The design creates and aligns the front porch of the building to a campus ‘spine’ that continues across central to a primary artery of the campus to the south. By creating a public hallway with indoor and outdoor spaces and lots of windows along the south side of building along Central Avenue allows the School of Music’s activity to be more visible to the community driving and walking by on Central. To bring the academic and public realms closer together, school related spaces connect to the public related spaces within the building. Using exterior materials to help communicate the goals of the building: lower brick volumes tie the building to campus with ‘university brick’, a middle volume tying everything together that is silvery and reflective of the community around the campus, and taller volumes driven by performance spaces wrapped in white ‘curtain’ panels that blend into the clouds at certain times of day.
In addition to broadening the School of Music’s ability to engage the public in the Performance Hall, the Hall is intended to be used by community partners including the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Opera Memphis. Perhaps more critically, the Center allows for the continued growth of the School of Music and the impact of school students, faculty, and alumni on local, regional and international stages.
