Situated at the King Eddy in the East Village, the National Music Centre is conceived as an urban musical instrument dynamically responding in colour and scale to both its contents and surroundings. The design takes cues from the natural and urban morphology of its setting, including the mountains, the city centre, and the river. It is an architectural intervention in Calgary that renews the King Edward Hotel and is iconic in its design character, both belonging to its surroundings and respecting the context from which it grows. With music as a vehicle for connecting people of all backgrounds, the project will facilitate new understandings of sound, technology and history. The National Music Centre will simultaneously regenerate the cultural landscape while providing visitors new perspectives (figuratively and literally) onto the landscape in which we live everyday. The King Edward Hotel—long known as a venue for locals and travelers, performers and musicians—is a landmark of Calgary from whose site the new project not only takes inspiration, but emerges. The idea of conceptually multiplying the form of the King Eddy was the initial starting point for the design. Spaces evoking its shape are replicated and displaced throughout the project in order to reference its history. The building path becomes a three dimensional topography that links these replicated objects/spaces, so that the visitor experience is akin to a journey through a new landscape with the historic presence of the King Eddy becoming ubiquitous, felt throughout. The building envelope acts as a skin of clear and smoked glass that ties all the parts together, as it reacts to the activity within and reflects the surrounding urban context. The design and structure of the facades skin manifests in three dimensional terms of the sounds represented by the music we hear. Doing this is instructive to visitors in visualizing the way sound works and is also a signature treatment for the façade. The light-filled, ground level lobby, will be a place of lively exchange and interaction. Here, visitors will find the grand seating stairs under the atrium/reverberation space where they may relax, meet people, and discuss the exhibits and events. As the visitors move through the museum, these paths connect the new to the old, even literally crossing right over 4th Street SE. The atrium of the new museum’s lobby is capped by a large skylight, allowing natural light to illuminate the atrium chamber and flood into the grand foyer space. As the atrium rises, it becomes the reverberation space itself. The museum’s path often takes visitors through this “experience chamber,” based on notions of echo, delay, reverberation, a space that can be mechanically modified to alter sound and perception. This large chamber reacts to any sound input (human or instrumental sounds, using microphones, or with electronic input) and is able to manipulate these sounds. This element becomes the central structuring node for the overall project.