PAU | The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Cleveland, OH

Program

Museum

Client

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Collaborators

Landscape Architect:
James Corner Field Operations

Programming and Documentation:
Cooper Robertson

Lighting:
L'Observatoire International

Structural Engineering:
LERA

Size

Addition: 50,000 GSF
Renovation: 36,100 GSF

Status

Ongoing

PAU won the invited global competition to design an expansion of I.M. Pei’s original building, completed in 1995. Competing against an exclusive list of invited architects, including several Pritzker laureates—PAU’s design was selected on the strength of its distinct palimpsest design approach that reimagined and extended Pei’s architecture. Instead of creating a wholly separate object, PAU’s design brings new life and dimension to Pei’s original pyramid as well as the larger site, with new internal and external public spaces intended to immerse visitors in the future of Rock & Roll. The expansion will roughly double the size of the museum, including a new entry lobby and public space; an acoustically-designed and sub-divisible performance, classroom, and 1,350 person event venue; reinvented permanent and temporary exhibition space; new food and beverage offerings; replacement office space; and a complete rethinking of circulation systems that extend into the landscape.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame describes itself as “the foremost popular culture museum in the world,” however, the Hall is much more than a museum—it is an entity that punches well above its weight. From acting as a classroom for local students, to providing a venue for cherished family events, to hosting performances by the world’s greatest Rock talents, the Hall is a pan-cultural blockbuster that enriches the lives of everyday people and reminds them of their potential to create their “own path in music and in life.”

PAU’s concept for this significant expansion takes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s mission seriously, transforming the Museum into a holistic campus, expanding its facilities to meet the demands of its mandate: showcasing not just the past, but also the present, and future of Rock & Roll. Located on the edge of Lake Erie, our design welcomes visitors by pulling three forces together, the City, the Lake, and the Pyramid. The expansion brings the museumgoers experience in line with Rock & Roll in the 21st Century, with a redefined interior and exterior expression that is both inclusive and accessible for Rock and Roll fans from all over the world.

The challenge posed by designing an addition to a building as iconic as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is not insignificant, especially one conceived by I.M. Pei. Following his own examples in the East Wing addition to Washington’s National Gallery and the pyramid at the Louvre, PAU’s design is neither competitive icon nor silent partner — the result is a “both/and” architecture that is both reverent and irreverent. Echoing the diversity of rock music, we see the addition as the “PAU Party” in comparison to the existing “Pei Party.” We have drawn inspiration from Pei’s collection of solid shapes “partying” around a glass pyramid. In contrast, the addition has defined specific programmatic elements as their own solid shapes that are “partying” under a unified triangular roof, paying the homage that the original building so richly deserves while using a contrasting, contemporary language.

Unlike the original, a signature Pei edifice designed to legitimize a new art form with the refined language of museum spaces that showcase high culture, our design embraces a self-assured pantheon of rock and roll on its own, hard-partying terms: celebrating its indefatigable youthful exuberance and transgressive attitude as an already-exalted global movement, while expressing the music’s deep roots in the birthplace of the genre. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is the heart of Cleveland culturally and socially. In this spirit, the addition is proposed to be clad in black steel and specular granite, evoking Cleveland’s industrial past, a history “forged in flame.” Color will derive from the glass, evocative of the ephemera of stage lighting. As the visitor passes through to the interior, they will be immersed in the visceral, gritty quality that has always defined spaces for Rock music, from the old Cleveland Arena, to CBGBs, to the neighborhood dive bars that support local bands.

While setting a new tone for visitor experience, the Expansion integrates functionally, operationally, and aesthetically with the existing pyramid. It will provide programmatic spaces originally planned for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at its original site in The Flats on the other side of Downtown Cleveland, that were removed when it was ultimately sited on the shore of Lake Erie, while addressing operational issues that have emerged over the pyramids quarter century of service.