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Bureau V's experimental music venue with a high-tech vibe set to open in a former Williamsburg sawmill

Bureau V's experimental music venue with a high-tech vibe set to open in a former Williamsburg sawmill

Brooklyn designers Bureau V have completed National Sawdust, an experimental performance venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that will be home to the Original Music Workshop (OMW). The name of the venue comes from the existing building’s history as a sawmill. OMW is a nonprofit led by composer Paola Prestini, whose advisory board includes heavy-hitters such as James Murphy, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega, and Philip Glass.

The 3,000-square-foot space in the heart of Williamsburg at North 6th Street and Wythe Avenue was a collaboration between Bureau V and Arup. It was originally conceived back in 2012 with an estimated opening of 2013. In 2014, it was still unfinished, and a Kickstarter campaign raised over $100,000. Now the project is slated for an opening in October.

The design is a mix of a traditional European theater and a black-box space, combining the “crafted beauty of the former” with the “experimental programming and roughness of the latter.” The particular history of the site will add another layer of spatial interest to the building, as its industrial past is conflated with a high-tech present. The result is a sublime collision of new and old: technology and ruin, progress and history, refinement and grit. The acoustics are state-of-the-art and were developed with Arup.

For more details on the design, see AN’s original 2012 coverage.


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