Elizabeth Wirth Music Building

Part of the old music building was demolished in order to construct the new building, and the conservatory premises had to be refurbished. The old masonry had to be redone at the junction between the existing building and the new construction. The building cost C$70 million to build, ==Layout==

The Elizabeth Wirth Music Building has 8 floors above ground and two below ground, with the bottom floor containing the Wirth Opera Studio and the Music Multimedia Room (MMR), one of the largest sound stages in North America. The first floor comprises a spacious lobby with a mezzanine, and the Tanna Schulich Hall, an intimate performance venue with seating for 187 people. The third, fourth and fifth floors contain the Marvin Duchow Music Library, with the fifth floor also containing the Gertrude Whitley Performance Library and the Music Student Computer Room, which was updated in 2008. The sixth floor contains faculty office spaces, while the seventh floor contains the administration for the School of Music. The eighth floor is home to the research group, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). ==Architecture==

The Elizabeth Wirth Music Building has eight storeys that evoke the eight geological layers of the earth. With the building being located at the eastern edge of McGill campus on the corner of Sherbrooke Street and Aylmer Street, Gilles Saucier, the project manager, considered the new wing to be the access point to the campus and to the mountains. He said, originally in French, "It is as if the McGill campus is playing the role of a geological plate that moves the urban grid, which is accentuated by the design of the building." This is why the first floors are made of stone and concrete while those above are made of glass. The design of the building is anchored by the multimedia studio, which is encased in a polished limestone volume nearly five storeys tall (), submerged three storeys into the ground at the north end of the lot, up Aylmer Street. This space has incredible acoustic insulation, with no noise coming either from ventilation, mechanics, lighting or the outside. Practice rooms and technical studios occupy the basement floors south of the multimedia studio as this provides the best acoustics. When viewed from the outside, a folded concrete plane separates the multi-level main lobby from the library above. The intention of this concrete plane was to "evoke an eroded ground plane leading to Montreal's prominent Mount Royal beyond," according to the architects. ==See also==