WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC ARCHITECTURAL JOURNALISM AND MEDIA AWARD Spaces for gathering always imply or set up a performance. A ceremony, theater or music, a display, a dance, an encounter, a conversation. Great spaces amplify the power and effects of these expressions. What makes some spaces so well loved as to become icons while others fail to move us? How might architecture engage the body and trigger the senses? How does architecture create these enduring, embodied memories? We connect through our senses to the world around us and to each other. Detail, often seen as the dry, technical side of architecture, serves the sensory experience. Architecture is never one design; it’s a layering of many small decisions, details, and concepts that together engage the entire body and trigger the senses. These smaller designs—these nuts and bolts—and the way they build up into the experience of space, are the subject of this book. — Excerpt from Set Pieces, “A Way In: Introduction” by Matthew Lella  Photo courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects TEXT Lisa Landrum Performance spaces are among the most rewarding to design and enjoy. They are invigorating catalysts of democracy and culture; creative hubs of spectacle and catharsis; and critical forums of reflection, empathy and imagination. They induce personal reveries and social revolutions. Possibilities thrive! Set Pieces celebrates architecture’s capacity to intensify the intimacy, immensity, and diversity of theatrical and musical experience. Designs of whole halls are presented with an immersive prelude of auditoria images, and an expository appendix of plans and sections. Yet, as its title suggests, Set Pieces concentrates on performative parts. Its 15 fragments refer to 15 elements designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects for 11 performing arts projects in nine different cities in Canada, the United States, England, the Netherlands, and Russia. As “pieces,” these elements are both material components within larger works and intricate compositions in themselves. These pieces include sonic ceilings, luminous surrounds, spiralling stairs, and interconnected rooms, all finely crafted to resonate with good vibes and synaesthetic effects. Sensuality abounds. Set Pieces also delves into the play of technical, material and metaphoric associations. Readers are led backstage into the processes and workshops where these pieces were conceived and fabricated. A chapter on Ottawa’s National Art Centre shares the rationale of the Timber Cascade that envelopes the original concrete building with an airy new skin. Like the 1969 landmark, the 2017 addition of glass, mass timber, and triangulated coffers draws its lofty and geometrical inspiration from tetrahedral kites. A chapter on the Tornado Staircase for Buddy Holly Hall in Lubbock, Texas, spirals into complex geometries of not only the corkscrewing steel stair, but a multiple-vortex twister that devastated Lubbock in 1970. Alluding also to Buddy Holly’s transcendent energy and ultimate demise in a weather-induced aviation accident, this coiling piece of vertical circulation connects audiences to four levels of seating and socializing, while meaningfully embodying musical fervour and cosmic fate. A customized system of variable and fixed acoustical reflectors, positioned above an existing thrust stage, was developed for Memorial Hall on the campus of Marlborough College in the U.K. Photo courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects Other chapters describe the acoustically attuned millwork of Sine Wave in New York’s David Geffen Hall; the aural optimization of a Sound Cloud, which also conceals a fresh air plenum, in London’s Memorial Hall; and intertwined stories of flying canoes and logging industries in la chasse gallerie of Montreal’s La Maison Symphonique. Toronto chapters emphasize more civic settings. City Room at the Four Seasons Centre becomes a mediating space between opera and street; and Room for Everyone at the Daniels Spectrum aims to reflect in its facade the diversity of the Regent Park communities it celebrates and serves. Packing a plethora of delights, this book also assembles a plurality of voices. Principal architects are joined by a chorus of savvy virtuosos: set designer Mimi Lien; director, playwright and performer Robert Lepage; classical music critic Justin Davidson; acoustic scholar Kate Wagner; and experimental composer Robert Gerard Pietrusko. Their intervening essays and interviews bring profound depth and detail to the architecture of performance. In all, Set Pieces presents architecture as a harmonic coalescence of sonic, spectral, spatial and social elements, together striving to inspire, fulfill and delight society as a whole. Encore! The auditorium of Montreal’s Maison Symphonique is clad in Quebec beech wood, shaped with curved walls and balconies to optimize acoustics. Photo courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects Jury Comment :: Set Pieces is a beautifully crafted exploration of performance space architecture that bridges technical expertise with human experience. Through clear language and compelling imagery, it engages both architects and the public. Particularly relevant post-pandemic, it offers valuable insights into the cultural role of performance spaces while sharing practical design solutions. The thoughtful integration of sensory elements, geometry, and materiality creates an illuminating resource. The jury for this award included Jessie Andjelic, Chris Cornelius, Camille Mitchell (FRAIC), Maya Przybylski, and Terrence Smith-Lamothe (MRAIC). CONTRIBUTORS Diamond Schmitt: Don Schmitt, Matthew Lella, Gary McCluskie; Justin Davidson, Music & Architecture Critic for New York Magazine and Curbed; Kate Wagner, Architecture Critic for The Nation & Journalist; Robert Lepage, Playwright, Actor and Director; Mimi Lien, Set Designer; Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Designer & Composer, Associated Professor at University of Pennsylvania | CONCEPT Paddy Harrington and Jennifer Sigler | EXECUTIVE EDITORS Brian Sholis and Jennifer Sigler | MANAGING EDITOR Javier Zeller | GRAPHIC DESIGN Cristian Ordóñez for Frontier, Toronto | COPYEDITING Brian Sholis | PROOFREADING Keonaona Peterson | PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR BIRKHÄUSER Ria Stein | PRODUCTION Anja Haering, Amelie Solbrig As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: Set Pieces—Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments appeared first on Canadian Architect.