It could easily have become a deferred dream, the long-held desire for a world-class performance venue on campus. But the dream has been realized. In May, Stanford broke ground on the magnificent 844-seat Bing Concert Hall. Located across Palm Drive a short walk from the Cantor Arts Center, it will provide a premier performance space for visiting artists as well as Stanford’s student and faculty performers.
The new concert hall is just one way of extending the culture of creativity that is so important to the Stanford spirit. The University is known for its forward thinking, for its pioneering culture that serves as an incubator for new ideas and leadership. This reputation has its origins in the University’s founding, and as we look ahead, that legacy of innovation shapes our decisions about new facilities and programs.
There has never been a question of the need for a concert hall on campus: Anyone who has attended a Lively Arts performance knows that our venues are shockingly inadequate. Given recent economic pressures, this situation might have continued indefinitely were it not for an extraordinary gift from Helen and Peter Bing, ’55, that allowed us to move forward and support the academic mission.
The arts teach us to hear, see and think differently. Only a few students in each class will become professional artists or performers, but many will have a lifelong relationship with the arts, and all can be encouraged to think creatively. In this century, we need leaders who can come up with new ways of doing things.
The design of the Bing Concert Hall reflects the role of the arts in breaking down barriers. Its “vineyard design” allows the audience to envelop the stage, and indoor and outdoor spaces offer opportunities to gather before and after performances. This design was developed by a distinguished team that included Polshek Partnership Architects, theater planners Fisher Dachs Associates, acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota and landscape architect Cheryl Barton.
In the future we envision an arts district running from the Bing Concert Hall to the Cantor Arts Center. It will serve as an important bridge between campus and community, even as it connects the east and west sides of the University. In addition to building the concert hall, we are also looking at how we can repurpose existing facilities to nurture creativity and collaboration.
Design and design-based learning recently got a new home in one of our oldest buildings. Located in the center of campus on Panama Mall, Building 550 dates back to 1900. After various modifications, it had become a dark and inefficient facility.
Today its external façade has been restored to the original sandstone. Internally it has been transformed into a light-filled space adaptable to changing needs—perfect for the three interdisciplinary groups that call it home: the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, the Center for Design Research and the design group of the mechanical engineering department.
The Hasso Plattner Institute draws students and faculty campuswide to identify design opportunities and work in teams to address them. The Institute is home to a variety of research projects and courses, including Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, a course focused on developing solutions to challenges facing the world’s neediest individuals. One immediate opportunity for the institute was how to design Building 550 to nurture innovation. Its new home exemplifies “design thinking.” Everything is on wheels, unconstrained and instantly reconfigurable. As David Kelley, director of the institute, explained to alumni at the recent Leading Matters Bay Area, “Innovation presumes you don’t know the answer,” and students quickly realize there are many ways of doing things.
Stanford has a history of finding novel approaches to real-world needs. That ring on your cell phone? It is created with a technique called FM audio synthesis originally invented by John Chowning, the Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts, Emeritus, for use in music synthesizers. The landmark Cohen-Boyer patent on recombinant DNA (shared by Stanford and UCSF) enabled a variety of new drugs for illnesses ranging from diabetes to anemia to hormonal deficiency.
Earlier this year, these and thousands of other Stanford discoveries were recognized when innovators, inventors, licensees and venture capitalists gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL). During OTL’s tenure, almost 8,000 inventions have been disclosed, contributing to Stanford’s reputation as an entrepreneurial university. But it has been the extraordinary work of faculty and students that provided the foundation.
In this century, we believe the potential to drive discoveries to benefit the public is even greater. In providing the necessary facilities and programs, we set the stage for future change and extend Stanford’s legacy of innovation.
