Main Street Broadcast Studios transforms a late-19th-century brick infill building on a historic town square into a contemporary workplace and highly technical media-production facility for a nonprofit foundation. In support of the foundation’s mission, the design approach formed around three priorities: inserting a highly sensitive broadcast environment within a 130-year-old structure, preserving the building’s historic character, and creating a civic dialogue with the town square.

Through a series of precise interventions and the removal of accumulated uses and alterations, a flexible, clear-span interior was created around a series of inserted volumes that support the building’s highly technical environments. The result is a transformational spatial condition shaped by the interior volume within the walls of the historic shell and extending to the public square beyond.

The main façade of the building was completely restored back to the original masonry, removing multiple layers of paint and applied decoration in the process. Sensitive insertions of aluminum curtain wall and trim reinforce the depth of the load-bearing masonry façade and materially connect the exterior and interior.

All of the private and systems related programs are housed in two wood paneled volumes on the 1st and 2nd floor. The volumes ground the open floor plan spaces on both floors and organize circulation. The primary stair and façade are treated as applied / inserted objects within the overall space.

To accommodate the technical demands of the new use, much of the interior construction was selectively removed to create clear-span space between the existing brick party walls. Following demolition, the remaining shell was digitally scanned and modeled so that new construction could be precisely coordinated within the historic structure.