Adopting the name of the factory once housed within the century-old building’s shell, National Sawdust will provide composers and musicians a setting in which they can flourish, and a place where they are given commissioning support, mentoring and other critical resources essential to create, and then share, their work. For audience serious fans and casual listeners alike—the venue will be a place to discover genre spanning music at accessible ticket prices.

Describing their design approach to the venue, Bureau V states, “In order to move forward, we decided to look back. At its core, the design of National Sawdust is a retooling of the 18th century chamber hall model as an incubator for new music.” The wonderful anachronism of the chamber hall provides a simple but vital resource to musicians and composers of all genres: a home where they can dwell, compose, experiment, rehearse, record, and premiere new work. National Sawdust provides an extraordinarily intimate space—with a capacity ranging from 120 to 350—to experience genre-spanning music, at accessible ticket prices.

National Sawdust's design maintains the building’s historic brick exterior while providing a refined new interior. Bureau V worked closely with acoustics and theatre teams at Arup, to devise an acoustically-driven chamber hall with a wrap-around balcony that accommodates 170 patrons in row seating, 120 patrons in cabaret seating, or up to 350 standing guests. With variable stage configurations that can be lowered flush with the floor, the double-height venue can also hold a 70-piece orchestra for rehearsals and recordings.

Characterized by the insertion of a highly articulated crystalline form into the rough brick envelope of a former sawdust factory, National Sawdust combines the historic European concert hall with the contemporary multi-media, blackbox theatre, where the reverence and splendor of the former meet the experimentation and candor of the latter.

With Arup's acoustics team, Bureau V devised a custom skin that wraps the interior, made of perforated metal and fabric composite panels supported by an intricate network of recessed channels. This skin system remains visually translucent yet acoustically transparent, enabling sound to travel through it freely, while generating a wrap-around sculptural enclosure, which creates a seamless experience for a wide repertoire of performance.