INABA was commissioned by Red Bull Music Academy to transform four floors of a vacant building in New York's Chelsea neighborhood into a model learning environment. Dramatic walls and lighting create unique collaborative work areas in place of the traditional classroom.

Curving walls throughout the 38,000 square foot forum shape the distinct spaces. On the ground level the walls extend far into the former warehouse allowing passersby and users unrestricted views across the floor. They show a cross section of the types of activity taking place which include performances, private workshops, music production, and broadcasting, and revealing that the space is different in its use from the shops, galleries, and cafés of the area. Below, on the cellar level, the arcing walls of the capsule-shaped lounge are interrupted only to establish long views from the recording studio located at the south end to the open-air patio at the north. On one of the upper floors, the similarly rounded walls enclose eight collaborative music studio pods.

Since learning occurs in different kinds of contexts, the two lower levels are organized to provide a range of spaces for discussion and collaboration. Their central areas accommodate big gatherings like receptions and performances. People can interact for an extended period of time in more personal settings nearby including a living room-like auditorium, radio studio, production studio, rehearsal room, and several lounges.

In an interior that is used at all hours of the day, the lighting plays a key role in establishing the architectural atmosphere. During the day the central area on the ground level receives generous amounts of natural light from high floor-to-ceiling windows, while at night it is illuminated by rows of warm-colored custom-fabricated neon fixtures. The overall lighting is accented with various feature elements like diffused LED lighting that illuminates the radio studio and a programmable LED system that focuses light on rows of acrylic tubes above the bar. The cellar lounge has a low ceiling embedded with hundreds of linear LED fixtures to create a distributed field of light. Curved FRG light diffusers lend an intimate quality to the auditorium while the ceiling structure supports light riggings for more theatrical effects. In smaller ancillary spaces, colored neon and grazing fixtures are employed in combination with high saturation paint.

The office applies a creative method of problem solving to arrive at unique options that can be realized with a high degree of resolution. This stems from the practice’s broader philosophy to grasp the depths of a problem and to provide clients with findings that assist in making better-informed decisions during concepting, programming, design, and realization phases. We conducted a rigorous research on music history and associated work space that took place in New York City for the past 40 years. We formalized it into a 100-page booklet so to initiate the concept design. The design arrived at a place where the space introduces drama at a large scale with mix in texture at a human scale. Study of color was a key to set a dramatic background with minimum amount of construction. At the same time various type of materials and textures were tested to create a haptic human scale environment. Even the everyday objects-both mundane and highly designed-were taken into confederation to accent the space and populate the foreground. In order to key in all these different scale elements at once, both digital and physical models were made and served a large role in the quest of what we were looking for. Numerous iteration of testing, trial and error process was our only way to make ourselves comfortable to achieve the exact quality of space.

The Red Bull New York studios will be used as a space for experimentation. The goal is to share ideas, make things, and test the results. For example, the ground level will serve as an event venue for people to meet and talk, at other times as a working studio for producing content inspired by such discussions, and at others as a gallery where that work is displayed, together producing a feedback loop of trial-and-error learning.