Water/Music

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design

Project idea

Using the program of a bicameral Performing Arts Center located on Boston’s waterfront, the project embraces the site as it transitions from terrain vague, towards a new, terraformed urbanism. Can the architecture and remnant site infrastructure be recast as an integrated experience of land, water, space, and sensuality that regenerates a calcified, and isolated site… where an intuitive sculpting and terra-forming go hand-in-hand to unfold and re-stitch the building as a catalytic participant in the remaking of the city? And given the need for innovative types of gathering, how will the consideration of the landform inspire the auditoria themselves, the shape of the seating bowls or the spaces which support them?

Project description

Located in a developing area of the Boston waterfront, the project stands between landscape, urbanism, and architecture, in an effort to set a new interdisciplinary approach for the renovation of an abandoned industrial area. As host to the new Boston Music Hall and a series of associated facilities like studio theaters and performance spaces, the project aims to merge music and water. As such the water’s edge is not strictly marked by a straight boundary which ignores the bathymetry. Instead, the new edge is more fleeting, allowing the water to enter the site and interact playfully with the landform ( in a way suggestive of the “Flyshes” of Zumbaia on the northern coast of Spain) while defining a new civic surface within the artificial landscape.
The program has been expanded to include public baths and indoor/outdoor pools where people can relax while listening to live musical events, and in so doing rediscover the almost lost relationship which the city of Boston once had with the water’s edge.
The fragmented and layered nature of the landform enriches biodiversity and encourages nature’s role in the future development of this area, leaving a large part of it to its citizens in the form of a public park.
The conception of architectural objects gets lost as the building’s boundaries are blurred within the landscape.
In the same way, the new landscape perfectly integrates with the water edge on one side, and within the industrial harbor on the other one.


This project aims to exploit the potential of natural formations and the possible use in a contemporary architecture that aims to attract people to share an experience.
Nowadays, everyone can get the best quality sound experience simply staying at home and listening music on his headphones. However, people still feel the need of living an experience and sharing it, That is where architecture can play a primary role in defining new scenarios for unprecedented experiences.

Technical information

1_Meeting people natural flow IN the site 2_Using in-site facilities (All the warehouses already in the present on the site have the opportunity to open factory-to-customer services) 3_Water and Music are gradually mixed (Mixed used services will be following a water-to-land gradient) 4_Discover several facilities within the site 5_Redefining the water boundary (No more a straight line boundary but a permeable landscape that opens up new opportunities both for human activities and the natural habitat) 6_Water is part of the site and leisure areas (The new Boston Waterfront Park will enrich the area through a series of public and private service, public baths is one of them) 7_Existing warehouse will host back of the house (There is an existing fabrication that might be demolished, instead this might be the opportunity to integrate it into the landscape and fill it with the back of the house, due to the private access that is hidden to the public and a good solution for trucks to get into the site) 8_A mixed experience, enriched by diversity (The experimental sensorial experience provided by the combination of music and water allows to a series of new kinds of ambiences, both outdoor and indoor. A dynamic environment and a new urban attraction for the city of Boston).