3 Parts Garden 1 Part Guitar: Nashville's New Music City Center

Last week I took a design vacation to Nashvegas! My week was stuffed full of tours of historical architecture, local firms, and new projects. Surprisingly, the best tour of the week was Nashville's brand new convention center, Music City Center. Get ready ya'll- this thing is massive. 

Nashville is located within 600 miles of half of America's population. Using this to their advantage, the city of Nashville commissioned the new convention center in hopes of generating more travel to the city. The building is 2.1 million square feet, 1.2 of it being public space. The building sits on 16-acres, stretching all the from 5th to 8th Avenue. The aerial view shows the 4 acres of green space and guitar-shaped roof. In response to the convention center, Nashville has 12 new hotels in various stages of construction.

The convention center boasts 60 pieces of local art. Eight pieces were commissioned just for Music City Center, including the carpet design and a 4-story string sculpture. 

When spaces need to be extremely flexible it is often hard to incorporate exquisite design. The convention center overcame this challenge with flying colors- literally. The lighting design was functional, a great element for wayfinding, and provided a way to customize the space. All large ballrooms (as seen above) had uplighting that could be changed to any color of the spectrum to support brand image or color schemes. How cool is that? The illuminated signs outside the door could be changed as well, to help with wayfinding to get back to your group. 

My favorite design aspect of the convention center is that the architects didn't want there to be a main entrance or a back of the building. All of the dumpsters and loading docks are hidden discreetly behind a wall. The loading docks are actually one level above Demonbruen, so all of the unappealing elements of the convention center are hidden from guests and traffic. 

Can you see? Even though this picture is during construction, you can see that all of the loading docks are above street level and hidden by architecture. Absolutely brilliant! 

The Music City Center has raised the standards for the possibilities of commercial design. It embraces Nashville's culture, provides 90,000 square feet of functional meeting space, is wonderful and inspiring in both exterior and interior architecture, and on its way to becoming LEED silver certified. 

Photo and Fact Credit:
VisitMusicCity.com

The Lorax [design inspiration where we least expect it]

Sometimes when college gets tough, I start to revert back to the simpler days. You know, the days of naps... and picture books... and Saturday mornings that consisted solely of cartoons. While working on renderings, I often turn on some mindless TV show in the background, for when the 'pinwheel of  doom' takes over my computer. This Friday, I took a 180 from Real Housewives and I watched The Lorax. The Lorax had a surprisingly beautiful message about the future of our Earth and the troubles that come from building over top of it.

For those of you who need a summary, here is my swiftest attempt at one (though I highly suggest you watch it!): Ted Wiggins is a 12 year old boy trying to impress a girl, who fantasizes about owning a "real tree," for which there are none in the completely synthetic town of Thneedville. Ted listens to the cautionary tale of The Once-ler's troubles from cutting down the forest in exchange for a seed.

Though the children's animated movie is a whimsical rendition of Dr. Seuss' book, it has a great message to everyone about the future of our Earth. Whether or not that plot summary made any sense at all, here are some beautiful and/hysterical quotes that have a great message for sustainable design- some more subtle than others. Enjoy!

"Ted: Do you know where you can get a tree, like a real tree?

Ted's Mom: Why do you need a tree? Its just.. sticks out of the ground and does what? I don't even know what is does. Look! We've GOT a tree! It's the Oak-a-matic. Three modes! Summer, Fall, Winter, and... Disco!"

"You gotta be kidding me! Do you really think people are stupid enough to buy this?"
--Our research shows that if you put something in a plastic bottle, people will buy it!"

Ted: Ya but... Nobody cares about trees any more!
Once-ler: Then make them care! Plant the seed in the middle of town where everyone can see! Change the way things are.  I know it may seem small and insignificant but it's not about what it is.  It's about what it can become.  That's not just a seed anymore than you are just a boy.

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Photo Credit: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/movie/lorax_the/photo.html