Transforming a Temple into a New, Dedicated Home for Music

Originally occupying space in several small, temporary locations, the Omaha Conservatory of Music continued to grow and found itself in need of a new, dedicated home — a larger facility with teaching studios, as well as a performance venue. Opportunity presented itself when a local temple, originally constructed in 1952, relocated to a new facility leaving its existing building available to be repurposed. The Conservatory provides private lessons in orchestral instruments and voice, as well as, conducting, music composition and theory. With a significant community outreach in its String Sprouts program, the Conservatory also provides instruments and lessons to several hundred youth in the community at no cost to the student.

Adaptive Reuse Preserves the Original Structure

The 40,000-square-foot facility offered a perfect spatial fit and venue. An adaptive reuse project, the existing classrooms were subdivided into teaching studios, the conference center converted into a café and lounge, the chapel into a recital hall, and the sanctuary and social hall converted into a performance venue with 200 fixed seats. Seating Company installed telescopic seats that retract, bleacher-style, into the back wall, to increase the seating capacity to 500. In collaboration with Threshold Acoustics, state-of-the-art systems, including sound isolating partitions, proper room acoustics and a new mechanical system were designed and installed. The shell of the existing facility was in good shape and needed little work with the exception of a new roof and windows (the windows were configured similar to the original) essentially preserving the original exterior architecture.