Mount Royal University
Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
The Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts provides the region’s highest quality instructional and performance spaces, while serving as a cornerstone and entry to Mt. Royal University’s Lincoln Park Campus. The University’s natural setting, exhibiting geologic evidence of the tectonic forces that created the Rocky Mountains, inspired the massing of the new Centre and the main form of the concert hall. The volume of the hall rises above the lower forms of the building, alluding to the singular barn in the landscape, a typology found throughout Calgary. Within the concert hall itself, the expressed structure reiterates the barn profile, with the form of the Plain’s tipi abstracted as metal “tents.” Similarly, the Alberta rose inspired the crowning feature of the hall, the dramatic acoustical canopy, allowing the room to be “tuned” for various musical performances.
Project Data
Complete
95,000 sf (8,838 sm)
LEED Gold certified
Program & Highlights
800-seat concert hall
Rehearsal/performance studio
Teaching studios and practice rooms
Classrooms
Roof terrace
Recognition
2017 United States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) Merit Award
2016 Illuminating Engineering Society Award of Excellence (IES) for Lighting Design
2015 Top Project of the Year, Alberta Construction Magazine
2015 Top Project, Institution over $50 M, Alberta Construction Magazine
Stephan Bonfield, "Yuja Wang gives Bella Concert Hall a festive, virtuoso opening," Calgary Herald, October 1, 2015
Kenneth Delong, "Calgary Philharmonic, Calgary Opera offer stellar opening night for Bella Concert Hall," Calgary Herald, September 22, 2015
Yuja Wang opens new Calgary Arts Complex, International Arts Manager, August 28, 2015
"The Bella Concert Hall," International Arts Magazine, December 15, 2013
"Tempo is Allegro for Construction of Mount Royal University's New Conservatory," infrastructure.gc.ca, December 6, 2013
Jerry Eberts, "Bella Concert Hall and Conservatory," Award, October 2013
Stephen Hunt, “New Concert Hall an Alberta Beauty,” Calgary Herald, April 27, 2011
“The Bella is an exquisite concert hall. It is not only visually gorgeous, but the acoustics are equally stunning. It is both a thrill to perform and to listen to concerts there. We are so lucky to have a concert hall of the highest caliber as an addition for the Calgary arts community.”
— Diana Cohen, Concertmaster, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra
Collaborators
Associate Architect: Sahuri + Partners Architecture, Inc.
Structural Engineer: Read Jones Christoffersen, Ltd
Civil Engineer: Jubilee Engineering Consultants, Ltd.
MEP: H. H. Angus & Associates
Theater: Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
Acoustics: Talaske
Audio/Visual: Multi-Media Consulting, Inc
Lighting: Francis Krahe & Associates
Landscape Architect: 818 Studio Ltd.
Photography: Ema Peter
