Designed in collaboration with the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, the project for Avery Fisher Hall includes six levels above grade and one floor below. The interior organization is based on a sequence of public foyer and ancillary spaces surrounding the main concert hall and rehearsal space. From the principal entry on Josie Robertson Plaza, concert-goers are transported immediately to the large top-lit lobby.
The main concert hall is conceived as a hybrid shoe-box-cum-arena type of auditorium with vineyard seating for 2,400. At the orchestra level and for the first tiers of seats, low walls are introduced to create local sound reflections to compensate for the large size of the hall. Similarly, the stage is moved forward, with the chorus behind it to reduce the distance between the most remote seats. A Japanese hydraulic system allows groups of orchestra seats to be turned over to create a flat floor at the level of the stage or additional platforms within the audience.
The lobby floor and the main circulation spaces are faced in travertine, contrasting with the rough cleft-travertine walls of the concert hall. Backlit, acoustically reflective stacked-glass is used for the hall interior, which is isolated from the outer case by an air cavity. This treatment is intended to give a kind of sub-aqueous character to the interior of the auditorium.
In terms of its effective gestalt, the primary urban image of the building is a continuously glazed six-story, curved curtainwall that envelops the new foyer space at the northeast corner of the site as it rotates at Sixty-fifth Street to receive the thrust of the diagonal of Broadway. Supported on tubular steel bow string trusses, with hinged connections at the floor and diagonal bracing in between, this façade is clad throughout with large triangular facets of glass that produce a visually dynamic membrane. In contrast to the vertical and rectilinear curtainwall facing Josie Robertson Plaza, this spectacular bowed and faceted skin yields a changing, vibrant luminosity, varying continually, segment by segment, from direct transparency to opaque reflection, according to the angle of the sun. At night the faceted skin is transformed into a giant lantern, revealing through its transparency a festive multitude of concert goers ascending and descending through the building.
Facing Josie Robertson Plaza, the rectlinear south elevation is shaded by a series of fixed external horizontal louvers. Flanking this section of the façade, further recessed glazed areas are directly shaded from the sun by louvered panels that extend outwards from the roofline and by the adjacent wall sections that extend outwards to the south. Due to the high sun angles from the south, the use of the horizontal louvers on this elevation provide virtually a completely shaded surface, which, in conjunction with a high performance low-e coating on the glass surface, allows for the desired transparency.
一个宏伟的城市姿态激活了一个公共广场，并庆祝了突出的角落地点的重要性。
比赛的灵感来自重建现有建筑的需要，该建筑于 1962 年完工，该建筑已无法满足纽约市对世界级音乐厅的要求。Meier Partners 的设计将原来的结构改造成一个最先进的设施，具有标志性的城市形象、优雅有效的循环和一流的音响效果。
该项目的内部组织是与日本建筑师 Arata Isozaki 合作设计的，以一系列公共空间为基础，包括一个令人惊叹的采光大堂，环绕着主音乐厅和排练空间。音乐厅本身被设想为一个混合鞋盒和竞技场的礼堂，带有可容纳 2,400 个座位的葡萄园。定制设计的液压系统允许将管弦乐队的座椅组翻转过来，在舞台或观众席内的其他平台上形成平坦的地板，从而最大限度地提高灵活性。在外面，大堂地板和主要流通空间面对着石灰华，与音乐厅粗糙的裂隙石灰华墙形成鲜明对比。大厅内部采用背光、声学反射叠层玻璃，
六层高的弧形幕墙覆盖着巨大的三角形玻璃面，形成壮观的弓形和多面表皮，彰显了该建筑强大的城市形象。白天，这个立面会产生不断变化的、充满活力的光度，根据太阳的角度从水晶般的透明到不透明的反射不断变化。到了晚上，多面表皮变成了一个巨大的灯笼，显示出一大群喜庆的音乐会观众在建筑物中上上下下。