PUBLICAUCKLAND UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Designed with Jack Manning (Hill Manning Mitchell). A music theatre, recording studio, practice rooms, lecture rooms and a library – all set on a small site by a busy road and built on a very tight budget.
“The small idiosyncratic theatre sits obliquely within the secluded courtyard of the University Music School. It is the resonant heart of the place. You have the sense in the theatre of being in an irregular but spacious cylinder around which sound can spiral. The acoustic is excellent. Architect David Mitchell has created a natural acoustic that gives the music an immediacy to audiences and performers. We are inside the sound, which is fully shaped and ripened without being overwhelming. This is a performer’s sound, wanted and needed for the second-by-second judgement of musical execution. It is also the best sound for an audience, allowing it fully to hear all shapes, dynamics and intricacies. Auckland has no better music theatre.”
- Denys Trussell, musician and writer, Quote Unquote, July 1996
1986 NZIA Supreme Award
AHI Environmental Design Award
2013 NZIA Enduring Architecture Award
