Description

Acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma once said, “The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it’s to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and making sure it’s well-received and lives in somebody else.” Ours was an effort to adjust the concept of the Silk Road, the historical network of Eurasian trade routes traveled from the second century BCE to the mid-15th century. and to re-interpret it for the creative office setting of the Silkroad Project, a nonprofit arts and educational organization dedicated to innovation and learning through multicultural and interdisciplinary exchange.

​In 2010, the Silkroad Project relocated to Boston. With this transition came the opportunity to create a custom-made space that included both open and private offices, meeting areas, and an intimate performance space. In honor of the organization’s collaborative motivations, the multi-layered wall is a physical expression of creativity that separates the performance space from the workplace, yet links the two through its transparency.  Music passes unfiltered into the workplace while the offices’ natural light penetrates the wall to the artistic core. In this way it becomes a metaphor for the many economic, cultural, political and religious interactions and exchanges between the Eastern and Western worlds made possible by the Silk Road trade route.

Beyond the aesthetics, further considerations include enhancing practical and experiential aspects of the work environment, as well as a custom climate-controlled storage space that permits musical instruments to be stored on-site for the first time in the Silkroad Project’s history.