February 25, 2025

Set Pieces is reviewed in an article by Editor-in-Chief David Barbour for Lighting & Sound America

In recent years, the Canadian firm Diamond Schmitt Architects has racked up one distinguished performing arts project after another. With its stunning photos, this volume will make a fine addition to better coffee tables everywhere. But it also offers perceptive glimpses of how the design process works by zeroing in on certain details of certain notable buildings.

For example, a section titled "Timber Cascade" examines how the renovation of Ottawa's Brutalist National Arts Centre was made vastly more welcoming by adding new lobbies and public spaces featuring a construction of mass timber and floor-to ceiling windows.

"Sine Waves" describes how the renovation of what is now David Geffen Hall was shaped, in part, by “a series of millwork patterns of varying depth, rhythm, and relief, from flat to deeply corrugated," designed to evoke the movement of sound waves. 

"Tornado Staircase," looks at the spiral staircase in Lubbock, Texas' Buddy Holly Hall, reflecting the catastrophic twister that hit the city in 1970. An overt reference to a municipal tragedy might have been dismissed as unscrupulous. But, says Diamond Schmitt principal Matthew Lella, the people of Lubbock agreed that "the stair represented owning their story—making it theirs." 

In some ways, the most fascinating project is an unrealized proposal for a new home of the London Symphony Orchestra, which incorporates "a spiral circuit that envelops the building's lower levels and then becomes an interior promenade as the philharmonic hall emerges" above the terrace of the adjacent Barbican Center. It's an elegant idea and its evolution is laid out in everything from rough sketches to finished renderings. 

"All in all, Set Pieces is a deluxe visual introduction to Diamond Schmitt's performing arts work, supplemented by some fascinating ideas about venue design, especially from the point of view of acoustics.,"  says Barbour. "It will find homes in living rooms and on the shelves of architects and educators, and it will give readers something to think about."  

The book review appears in the February 2025 issue of Lighting & Sound America.
Set Pieces is available for purchase on Birkhäuser.