Community MusicWorks: A Healthy, Low-Embodied Carbon Center for Music

The Community MusicWorks Center is a gathering place for music and community. Healthy Materials Lab provided material health consultancy for this groundbreaking project. Our role in the project involved guiding material selection, advising on environmental strategies, and ensuring that every decision aligned with the building’s health and sustainability objectives. Since CMW primarily works with children, teens, and their families, we focused on protecting children’s health, knowing their developing organs and neurological systems are especially vulnerable to toxic exposures. 

The 24,000 square feet building features a central atrium and café that serve as a gathering area and performance space adjacent to the performance hall, as well as classrooms and practice spaces, lounge or meeting areas, a media lab, music library, and administrative offices. The building integrates a 7,000-gallon Rainwater System that captures the center’s stormwater to re-use for irrigation. 

Healthier materials are prioritized throughout the building

• Building materials and furnishings evaluated and selected to minimize toxins known to contribute to childhood diseases. 
• Some of the material categories include: formaldehyde-free plywood, mineral paint, wood-fiber acoustical panels, linoleum flooring, no finishes where not necessary 
• First fully Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) building in the city of Providence, and second in Rhode Island. CLT is used as the structure, dramatically reducing carbon emissions by limiting steel and concrete use
• Beyond construction, HML collaborated with CMW to guide furniture selection and healthy cleaning products, deepening the commitment to long-term indoor health and sustainability

• Architects: 3SIX0 Architecture
• General Contractor: Pezzuco Construction
• Acoustical Engineers: Arup 
• Material Health Consultants: Parsons Healthy Materials Lab

In 2017 CMW purchased a 10,000 square foot empty lot at 1326 Westminster Street, one block from its original storefront, to create a “hub for community performance” a “home for young musicians” and a “center for developing practice”. HML studied the site to understand the existing toxicities and pollutants in the neighborhood. These findings helped inform a guiding framework for our recommendations and strategies for the building.

• Winter 2017: CMW purchases empty lot at 1326 Westminster Street
• Spring 2021: future site celebration with community friends for the world premiere of Traces, a collaborative sonic piece by Community MusicWorks, Shaw Pong Liu, and the Rhode Island Historical Society, for tracing, acknowledging, and celebrating the past, present, and future of 1326 Westminster Street
• Spring 2022: groundbreaking with student musical performances
• Fall 2024: building is complete and opens to the students and public

image header courtesy of CMW, photograph by Rebecca Atwood/Atomic Clock Photography.