The fourth floor includes ensemble rooms and individual practice rooms for student rehearsals. The floors above contain student dorm rooms, and a fitness center.
Storyk says the “coolest” room in the building is the cafeteria, due to its dual purpose design.
“It depends on who you talk to,” he says. “Some people think it’s a cafeteria and, “oh, by the way we play,” and then some people think it’s a performance hall, “oh, by the way we eat.”
A quick look at Berklee’s new cafeteria/performance space.
Berklee’s Building Goals
With the building opening its doors to students about a month ago, Storyk says the college wanted to accomplish a small handful of goals.
To start, he says Berklee “had to expand.”
“There was a shortage of practice rooms and we needed new studios,” he says. “We had studios, but not at this building.”
Storyk also says the college wanted to create an updated, contemporary space for its students, faculty and staff, especially with the new cafeteria/performance room.
“The old [cafe] space was terrible,” he says. “We [now built] a first class student cafe with a real ability to perform. The cafe has incredible sound.”
Storyk also said the building is a signature of Berklee’s current president, Roger Brown.
“The goal was to make the rooms have their own signature,” he says. “Happiness for me is to come back in ten years and for it to still look fresh. I think we’ve accomplished that.”
Berklee’s Building Challenges
Storyk says that the building team faced challenges as small as untangling wiring to the tribulations of accommodating all the “talking heads” involved.
“Just the sheer size of the project” was a challenge, he says. “To have this many studios and dorms in the middle of Boston. It’s a perfect storm of craziness.”
Judy Elliot-Brown, the integrator and client project manager for Berklee’s building project, says one of her team’s biggest challenges was managing construction.
For one part of the installation, the construction crew planted a crane in the middle of the building through to the sub-basement level, which reduced space to work.
“The crane’s footprint ran through the mastering room, smack through the main control room on the top floor,” she says. “We had no room.”
