Architectural Record – August 2019

LINDE CENTER FOR MUSIC AND LEARNING LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS WILLIAM RAWN ASSOCIATES^59

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE The complex sits up the

hill from Rawn’s celebrated Seiji Ozawa Hall

(opposite, top) and includes a low-slung cafeteria

that looks out to a 100-year-old oak tree.

1 TAPPAN ESTATE HOUSE

2 HIGHWOOD ESTATE HOUSE

3 THE SHED

4 SEIJI OZAWA HALL

5 LINDE CENTER FOR

MUSIC AND LEARNING

strategies for connecting the audience to the

outdoors with abundant apertures, like Ozawa

Hall’s 50­foot­wide barn door. But now, he

points out, “it’s doubly important to figure

out ways to make Tanglewood more accessible

to everyone—make it more than just a conser­

vatory,” because of increasing professional

competition.

Though the center was first envisioned as a

single building next to Ozawa Hall, the architects

broke down the volume so as not to make it

imposing. “This was also an opportunity to

engage the landscape in different ways,” says

WRA design principal Cliff Gayley, “including the

spaces between programmatic elements, so you

could experience the joy of passing through the

landscape as you went room to room.” Working

with Reed Hilder brand landscape architects

(which is engaged in an ongoing project to unify

and enhance the larger campus), the design team

relocated the site up the hill to a former overflow

parking lot, because, says Rawn, “We wanted

these studios to partake of the lawn as the other

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