Armerding center for music and the arts at Wheaton College

Abstract

Wheaton College has long cultivated young musicians in a tight-knit community outside of Chicago. As the program has grown in recent decades, however, the community has burst at the seams in need of expanded space for faculty and students alike. The construction of a new science building on campus led to the availability of Armerding Hall to be redeveloped into a new home for the Conservatory on the central campus quad. Shallow floor-to-floor heights and limited structural capacities led to acoustic isolation strategies that provide “just enough” separation between faculty studios and relied on careful detailing for success. A steeply-raked Lecture Hall was reimagined to become a 100-seat recital hall with volume carved into adjacent spaces. Other spaces within the building include ensemble rehearsal rooms, a recording suite, and a room for multi-media composition. A second phase of the project will include new construction of a 650-seat concert hall and the college’s first dedicated rehearsal hall for their formidable choral program.