The new Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield School of Music at the University of Missouri-Columbia is the first of a three-phase master planned facility that consolidates all the school’s academic, practice, and performance venues into a single facility. Students previously attended classes in a series of acoustically inadequate buildings scattered across campus and needed a facility that would better support and strengthen their premier collegiate music program. The Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield Music Center renews and strengthens the School of Music’s culture and identity on MU campus by providing spaces that create seamless collaboration amongst students and instructors, allow for flexibility and adaptability to emerging trends, and provide state-of-the-art, acoustically isolated spaces for all rehearsals, recordings and performances.

The site, located at the corner of Hitt Street and University Avenue, sits at the northern edge of the campus and provides a unique and valuable opportunity for the new music center to spur the development of a cultural corridor connecting the University of Missouri with downtown Columbia. To tie into and enhance this cultural corridor, the performance space lobbies and primary building circulation run parallel along the street, anchored by two large entry plazas that dual as external performance venues, allowing the building activity to be on display and spill out into the community.

The design is shaped by the primary goal of enhancing the human experience, both by providing an acoustically advanced facility that increases functionality and by creating inspiring, comfortable spaces which promote creativity and well-being. The new facility enables students to learn, practice, and perform in a strong acoustical atmosphere that supports the composition, instrumental, vocal, and editing and recording curricula.

The project was designed to achieve LEED certification.