Profile

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Cleveland, Ohio
Completed 1995

Lead Designer: I. M. Pei

Hall of fame, museum and study center
 

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This building was designed to express the dynamic music it celebrates, and emblematize the city that introduced the term "rock and roll" in the mid-1950s. Simple geometric forms are juxtaposed to combine diverse functions within a unified whole. A theater cantilevered over Lake Erie on one side balances a circular performance drum on the other while a 165-foot-high orthogonal tower rises from the water to engage a tetrahedral glass tent. Like an explosive musical chord, the sculptural components reverberate out from center.

The building is set back in a 1.2-acre performance plaza on the roof of the main exhibition space. The site's change of grade was maximized to tuck the bulk of the museum underground and create a controlled environment for its highly interactive installations. The building rises with eight unique floor plates of decreasing size, ultimately ascending to the Hall of Fame itself — a contemplative fiber optics chamber.

Visitors to the building are not merely spectators but essential participants, animating it with color and movement as they circulate on open balconies, bridges, stairs and escalators crisscrossed up and down. At night the building comes alive with sequenced lights. The design creates for the museum a civic identity that reaches out to the public and anchors Cleveland's developing waterfront as a nationally significant center of entertainment, education and culture.

Major Components

50,000 net s/f exhibition space on 7 levels  (79,000 s/f – 3,800 s/f) including 3,200 s/f Circular Drum, 3,700 s/f Cantilevered Auditorium (170 seats), 1,450 s/f  Hall of Fame; Disc Jockey Booth; 32,000 s/f public circulation; 14,500 s/f Administration; 9,800 s/f support; 7,800 s/f  Museum  Shop; 3,450 s/f cafe; 1,000 s/f. outdoor Cafe Terrace; 52,300 gross s/f plaza.

Awards

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners services

Programming; Site Planning; Architectural Design; Interior Design of public spaces; coordination with associate architect on construction documents and construction administration

Associate Architect

Robert P. Madison International, Inc., Cleveland, OH

Structural

Leslie E. Robertson Associates, New York, NY

Mechanical / Electrical

Altieri Sebor Wieber Consulting Engineers, Norwalk, CT 

Lighting

Fisher Marantz Renfro Stone, New York, NY

Exhibits

The Burdick Group, Inc., San Francisco, CA

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