SCUP/AIA-CAE Excellence in Architecture for a New Building,
Honor Award

Oberlin College for The Bertram and Judith Kohl Building with The Krill Co., Inc.

Photo by Kevin Reeves

Photo by Kevin Reeves

Click on images above to view larger image

The Bertram and Judith Kohl Building is the new home for the Jazz Studies Department at Oberlin College and features a world-class recording studio, flexible rehearsal and performance spaces, teaching studios, practice rooms, departmental offices, and archives for the largest private jazz recording collection in America, and a rare collection of jazz photographs from the 1950s.

The design objective was to create an acoustically isolated, technologically and environmentally advanced building, capitalizing on the creative energy and entrepreneurial spirit inside to create awareness of it on the outside.

The conservatory needed a place where students could gather between classes and after hours. The building strategically creates places for intellectual loitering and assembly of creative ideas. It sets a new measure for future buildings to provide programmatic uses, and include social, environmental, economic, and beauty features.

The building is successful at bringing visitors and residents into the creative daily activities taking place within the building.

The jury said, “ . . . the building was fantastic . . . they did a beautiful job . . . beautiful skin . . . syncopated glazing very nice . . . meeting the bridge completes the gesture . . .”

Construction of the building shell was complicated and required a sequenced approach to the building schedule. There was also added pressure on subcontractors to avoid hindering each other’s work; however, this approach increased personal accountability among subcontractors and helped improve overall productivity and collaboration.

One big challenge was the use of five different material types with dissimilar tolerances that were brought together in irregular geometric angles with multiple layers. The building’s syncopated metal wrapper, somewhat less regimented than the neo-gothic precast-skin it appends to, is manipulated to permit light and view as it relates to program and acoustic requirements.

Materials that could be left natural and exposed were chosen so requirements of acoustically isolated construction could create the character of the spaces, visually and aurally.

The building brackets a landscape that creates a one-eighth mile long axis extending south from Tappan Square, the historic center of town. This axis becomes an entry plaza, drawing activity to the center of the building where it splits, continuing south or ascending the building as a series of steps and terraces leading to third floor roof gardens.

“The design excellence of the building accurately projects the mission of the college in providing excellence in education,” says Steven Varelmann, college architect of Oberlin College. “The building is a valuable addition to the collection of architecturally significant buildings on campus that can serve as a living history lesson to students for decades to come,” he adds.

Project Team: Oberlin College with The Krill Co., Inc.; also Westlake Reed Leskosky