Publication: Architecture
Date: Wednesday, August 1, 2001

Written by: Anne Guiney

"It's just a shed," Eero Saarinen is reported to have said in disgust when he was asked to modify his design for a covered performance space on the grounds of Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  His dismay aside, the name stuck, and the Koussevitsky Shed has become a beloved venue.  Two similar structures are currently in the works.  Hanrahan Meyers Architects have designed the Ojai Libbey Bowl, in Ojai, California, which will serve as the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and this spring, Resolution: 4 Architecture began design on an amphitheater in a cultural park just outside Columbia, South Carolina.

Because the Hanrahan Meyers project is for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, acoustics drove the entire process.  The firm collaborated with Nagata Acoustics, which is also working with Frank Gehry on Disney Hall, on the bandshell's double-layered design – the inner layer, of concrete and wood, is for acoustical purposes, the outer, of translucent fiberglass panels, is for shelter and aesthetics.  A second important consideration was tree preservation.  Principal Victoria Meyers says that when she was told that any scheme that required cutting down trees would never get by the local board, she took the advice literally.  The only way to make the structure big enough to accomodate a full orchestra was to wrap it around two existing trees.  So they did.  All of the service areas and mechanicals are stashed in a spur off to the side of the main stage; the open-air space in between serves, literally, as a green room.

Resolution: 4 Architecture's brief was more general then that of Hanrahan Meyers, but with no less of an emphasis on nature.  Both projects are scheduled to begin construction in 2002, and both offer an elegant rebuttal to Saarinen's critique of a simple shed.