Jarvis Conservatory

Housed in the historic Lisbon Winery Building, built in 1880, the Jarvis Conservatory is a state-of-the-art, yet intimate, 250-seat performance space with an orchestra pit designed to accommodate up to a 30-piece orchestra. The building also contains music studios for instrumental and vocal practice and features areas for dance and administrative offices.

Auerbach Pollock Friedlander provided theatre consulting, master planning and program development of facilities for the new opera training and performance facility. The firm worked closely with the Conservatory’s directors to establish criteria for required spaces and to determine whether the existing building could meet their needs.

Due to limited existing space, the adaptive re-use of the winery building required excavation of a new basement to provide dressing rooms and a cross over. It also provided an opportunity to incorporate inventive use of existing seismic framing of the roof and walls for acoustic drape storage pockets and lighting catwalks.

Motorized rigging was utilized to make the best use of the stage space which was restricted by the historic nature of the building and its location.

Architect: Sutton Suzuki Architects
Acoustics: Acoustic Dimensions
Size: 23,000 SF
Completion: 1995