Special to The Epoch Times
Boston Designer Series: Architect: Alan Joslin

Elegant Frugality For The Performing Arts
December 11 - 17, 2006
By RICHARD CAMPBELL

This interview is the first of a series focusing on Boston metro area designers. Mr. Joslin is the principal of Epstein Joslin Architects, a Cambridge architecture firm that he and his wife, Deborah Epstein, formed in 2002. The firm is known for
fine homes and concert halls. His design work has received multiple AIA (American Institute of Architects) awards and many local and national awards for excellence in design. Prior to forming EJA, Alan was a principal at William
Rawn Associates where, for 17 years as Principal-in-Charge of Design and/or Project Architect, he oversaw the design of more than a few New England landmarks, including Ozawa Hall for the Boston Symphony. He received a Master of Architecture and also a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with associated study at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and at the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design, in Urbino, Italy. He now teaches architectural design at MIT.

EPOCH TIMES: The way I came to your work was
by attending the production of “The Ice Breaker” at
the New Repertory Theatre, for which you created the
beautiful adobe house set. Is set design kind of a rarity
for architects?

Alan Joslin (AJ): “Well I think it’s generally more popular
with painters, though I know a number of architects that
have dabbled with it. I came into stage design following
architecture school, admiring the stage work of my director/
actress sister-in-law, Judy Braha, at the now defunct New
Ehrlich Theatre at the BCA. I asked to try my hand on a
show, became addicted to the fast-paced design world, and
ended up spending more then two years designing for the
theater. When, David Zoffoli, a fabulous actor/friend from
that period, and director of “Ice Breaker” invited me to join
him again, 20 years later, I couldn’t say no.”

EPOCH TIMES: Tell us about how stage design and
architecture feed into each other.
AJ: “I have learned a great deal from stage design that
I now use in architecture. First, perspective view is
fundamentally important in communicating the ideas of a
building. Set designers know this because their work must
address the very particular vantage points of the audience.
Architects can forget this visual reality and get very lost in
the abstract concepts of their design, losing sight of how
the building presents itself, how light works, and from that,
how the building feels and communicates to the inhabitant.”

EPOCH TIMES: Many of your buildings are public
spaces, oftentimes utilized for the performing arts. How
does that affect the way you design?
AJ: “I see buildings as playing a role in the telling of a
story. That story tends to be an articulation of the worldview
to which the builder and/or user group aspires. We
start with the ideas, or mission of the institution as the text
of the story, and then we shape the building as the backdrop
to the rituals it must support.”

EPOCH TIMES: I understand that Deborah has quite
a background in creating environments. How has she
in• uenced your designs over the past
20 years?
AJ: “We respect the interests and
skills of each other. But in particular,
Deborah has an insatiable passion in
the use of exotic materials and fine
craftsmanship. In fact, on a family
trip to Italy she made us all visit the
mountains of Carrara, from where
Michelangelo’s marble was quarried.
She has a very direct connection with
the emotional and poetic energy [that]
materials, textures, and color bring to
the experience of environments. I love
piggy-backing this attention of hers
into our collaborative projects.”

EPOCH TIMES: The Strathmore
Music Center, second home of The
Baltimore Symphony, is one of your
full-blown performing arts centers.
How did working in this particular
environment impact your interior
work?
AJ: “The trick here was how to make a big building
comfortable in an intimate environment. Strathmore
Hall is an outdoor arts park, so we worked hard to
make a curvaceous form, set low onto a steep hillside,
fit softly into its landscape setting. However, that same
curvaceous form was also chosen to directly reflect the
interior acoustic and spatial needs of a 2,200-seat concert
hall.”

EPOCH TIMES: When you are building a stage
that can be used for dance, music, theater, and other
presentations, explain the differences in design.
AJ: “The acoustic and technical design requirements
in spaces for music are so different to those of dance or
theater. For example, the sound in a classical music hall
should be wonderfully warm and reverberant, a bit like
singing in a shower, whereas if theater should take place
in such an environment, this reverberation would garble
the articulation of words. In theater, you want to hear just
the direct sound of the voice. On the other hand, dance can
survive well in either of the environments, so long as all
seats allow good views of the dancers’ feet.”

EPOCH TIMES: What was your favorite performance
in a building you designed?
AJ: “Randall Thompson’s ‘Alleluia’ in Ozawa Hall,
at Tanglewood, for the BSO in 1994 just before it was
open to the public. The piece was originally written for
the Tanglewood Music Center, and since that time it
has traditionally been sung by the students, beginning
their summer tenure as a music community. It is thus
emotionally charged to begin with and as the first piece
of music performed in the new hall, I was deeply moved.
Again, performed at Opening Night, I turned with joy to the
acoustician, Larry Kirkegaard, sitting next to me, and saw
tears filling his eyes. It was a shared moment I will never
forget.”

EPOCH TIMES: In Rockport, you are working on a
chamber music hall that blends into a charming New
England harbor. The pictures here say it all, but tell us
about the process.
AJ: “Twenty-seven firms submitted their qualifications for
the project and it came down to four interviewed firms, of
which we were one. We suggested a concert hall organized
on the Main Street level with a large glass wall behind the
stage looking out to the harbor, thus merging community
with the play of music, light (colorful sunsets), and water
during the concerts. We also suggested recreating and
enhancing an historic upper-floor meeting room as both
a cultural and civic amenity to the Music Festival and the
Town of Rockport. But most importantly, this approach also
allowed a big building to step down in scale to the harbor
and fit into the charming village atmosphere.”

EPOCH TIMES: Let’s say that a college or school
comes to your firm for a design project, and you do a
consultation, and the firm is hired for the job. How do
you begin?
AJ: “We usually get a job by invitation and interview. We
begin the process with an intensive two- or three-day, on the-
site interview and work session to learn all aspects of
the organization and the site. Once we absorb all we can,
then and only then do we develop sketches and ideas, on
site, for immediate reactions and fine-tuning. By the end
of two or three days we know them, and they know us. For
the Rockport Chamber Festival project we also organized
tours, listening to concerts at many halls, and testing with
the design committee forms appropriate to their program. It
helped us develop with the client a common nomenclature
for later evaluations of our design collaboration.”

EPOCH TIMES: Explain the term “elegant frugality,”
which I ran into looking at the tenets of your design
philosophy.
AJ: “It’s a real Yankee attitude. I wish I had coined it, but
credit is owed to Bill LeMessurier, a renowned structural
engineer and collaborator at Ozawa Hall. It quickly became
our mantra.“Basically it means designing directly to the needs of the
building, removing all that is superfluous, and composing
what is there with a proportional elegance. What comes
out of it is so connected to its purpose, and hopefully very
beautiful, much like the work of the Shakers. We seek
economy, purpose, and beauty.”
Richard Campbell is a playwright from Boston Mass.
View his writings and graphics at http://home.earthlink.
net/~photocafe.


Boston Designer Series, Alan Joslin, Architect
Elegant Frugality For The Performing Arts
December 11 - 17, 2006
By RICHARD CAMPBELL
Special to The Epoch Times
This interview is the first of a series focusing on Boston metro area designers. Mr. Joslin is the principal of Epstein Joslin Architects, a Cambridge architecture firm that he and his wife, Deborah Epstein, formed in 2002. The firm is known for
fine homes and concert halls. His design work has received multiple AIA (American Institute of Architects) awards and many local and national awards for excellence in design. Prior to forming EJA, Alan was a principal at William
Rawn Associates where, for 17 years as Principal-in-Charge of Design and/or Project Architect, he oversaw the design of more than a few New England landmarks, including Ozawa Hall for the Boston Symphony. He received a Master of Architecture and also a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with associated study at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and at the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design, in Urbino, Italy. He now teaches architectural design at MIT.

EPOCH TIMES: The way I came to your work was
by attending the production of “The Ice Breaker” at
the New Repertory Theatre, for which you created the
beautiful adobe house set. Is set design kind of a rarity
for architects?

Alan Joslin (AJ): “Well I think it’s generally more popular
with painters, though I know a number of architects that
have dabbled with it. I came into stage design following
architecture school, admiring the stage work of my director/
actress sister-in-law, Judy Braha, at the now defunct New
Ehrlich Theatre at the BCA. I asked to try my hand on a
show, became addicted to the fast-paced design world, and
ended up spending more then two years designing for the
theater. When, David Zoffoli, a fabulous actor/friend from
that period, and director of “Ice Breaker” invited me to join
him again, 20 years later, I couldn’t say no.”

EPOCH TIMES: Tell us about how stage design and
architecture feed into each other.
AJ: “I have learned a great deal from stage design that
I now use in architecture. First, perspective view is
fundamentally important in communicating the ideas of a
building. Set designers know this because their work must
address the very particular vantage points of the audience.
Architects can forget this visual reality and get very lost in
the abstract concepts of their design, losing sight of how
the building presents itself, how light works, and from that,
how the building feels and communicates to the inhabitant.”

EPOCH TIMES: Many of your buildings are public
spaces, oftentimes utilized for the performing arts. How
does that affect the way you design?
AJ: “I see buildings as playing a role in the telling of a
story. That story tends to be an articulation of the worldview
to which the builder and/or user group aspires. We
start with the ideas, or mission of the institution as the text
of the story, and then we shape the building as the backdrop
to the rituals it must support.”

EPOCH TIMES: I understand that Deborah has quite
a background in creating environments. How has she
in• uenced your designs over the past
20 years?
AJ: “We respect the interests and
skills of each other. But in particular,
Deborah has an insatiable passion in
the use of exotic materials and fine
craftsmanship. In fact, on a family
trip to Italy she made us all visit the
mountains of Carrara, from where
Michelangelo’s marble was quarried.
She has a very direct connection with
the emotional and poetic energy [that]
materials, textures, and color bring to
the experience of environments. I love
piggy-backing this attention of hers
into our collaborative projects.”

EPOCH TIMES: The Strathmore
Music Center, second home of The
Baltimore Symphony, is one of your
full-blown performing arts centers.
How did working in this particular
environment impact your interior
work?
AJ: “The trick here was how to make a big building
comfortable in an intimate environment. Strathmore
Hall is an outdoor arts park, so we worked hard to
make a curvaceous form, set low onto a steep hillside,
fit softly into its landscape setting. However, that same
curvaceous form was also chosen to directly reflect the
interior acoustic and spatial needs of a 2,200-seat concert
hall.”

EPOCH TIMES: When you are building a stage
that can be used for dance, music, theater, and other
presentations, explain the differences in design.
AJ: “The acoustic and technical design requirements
in spaces for music are so different to those of dance or
theater. For example, the sound in a classical music hall
should be wonderfully warm and reverberant, a bit like
singing in a shower, whereas if theater should take place
in such an environment, this reverberation would garble
the articulation of words. In theater, you want to hear just
the direct sound of the voice. On the other hand, dance can
survive well in either of the environments, so long as all
seats allow good views of the dancers’ feet.”

EPOCH TIMES: What was your favorite performance
in a building you designed?
AJ: “Randall Thompson’s ‘Alleluia’ in Ozawa Hall,
at Tanglewood, for the BSO in 1994 just before it was
open to the public. The piece was originally written for
the Tanglewood Music Center, and since that time it
has traditionally been sung by the students, beginning
their summer tenure as a music community. It is thus
emotionally charged to begin with and as the first piece
of music performed in the new hall, I was deeply moved.
Again, performed at Opening Night, I turned with joy to the
acoustician, Larry Kirkegaard, sitting next to me, and saw
tears filling his eyes. It was a shared moment I will never
forget.”

EPOCH TIMES: In Rockport, you are working on a
chamber music hall that blends into a charming New
England harbor. The pictures here say it all, but tell us
about the process.
AJ: “Twenty-seven firms submitted their qualifications for
the project and it came down to four interviewed firms, of
which we were one. We suggested a concert hall organized
on the Main Street level with a large glass wall behind the
stage looking out to the harbor, thus merging community
with the play of music, light (colorful sunsets), and water
during the concerts. We also suggested recreating and
enhancing an historic upper-floor meeting room as both
a cultural and civic amenity to the Music Festival and the
Town of Rockport. But most importantly, this approach also
allowed a big building to step down in scale to the harbor
and fit into the charming village atmosphere.”

EPOCH TIMES: Let’s say that a college or school
comes to your firm for a design project, and you do a
consultation, and the firm is hired for the job. How do
you begin?
AJ: “We usually get a job by invitation and interview. We
begin the process with an intensive two- or three-day, on the-
site interview and work session to learn all aspects of
the organization and the site. Once we absorb all we can,
then and only then do we develop sketches and ideas, on
site, for immediate reactions and fine-tuning. By the end
of two or three days we know them, and they know us. For
the Rockport Chamber Festival project we also organized
tours, listening to concerts at many halls, and testing with
the design committee forms appropriate to their program. It
helped us develop with the client a common nomenclature
for later evaluations of our design collaboration.”

EPOCH TIMES: Explain the term “elegant frugality,”
which I ran into looking at the tenets of your design
philosophy.
AJ: “It’s a real Yankee attitude. I wish I had coined it, but
credit is owed to Bill LeMessurier, a renowned structural
engineer and collaborator at Ozawa Hall. It quickly became
our mantra.“Basically it means designing directly to the needs of the
building, removing all that is superfluous, and composing
what is there with a proportional elegance. What comes
out of it is so connected to its purpose, and hopefully very
beautiful, much like the work of the Shakers. We seek
economy, purpose, and beauty.”
Richard Campbell is a playwright from Boston Mass.
View his writings and graphics at http://home.earthlink.
net/~photocafe.