HMFH Architects

Cambridge Community Television’s new home, once a hardware store, is now a 8,000 sf venue for television and audio production and editing. While the bustling Massachusetts Avenue location offered high visibility and easy mass transit access, the subway train running directly beneath the site presented acoustical challenges. The team’s solution includes double walls and a floating slab floor for the venue’s two live studios and large video and audio production studio, as well as double-paned windows throughout. In the studios and control room, the angles of the walls were carefully designed for optimal sound reflection and absorption.

In addition to the production studios, the venue houses a classroom, green room, control room, two computer labs, office space, and new gathering spaces that further CCTV’s community-based mission: a teen center upstairs, as well as a members’ lounge just inside the front door. Timber salvaged from the original structure was repurposed into benches for this adaptive reuse and other materials were selected for high durability, low emissions, and energy-efficiency.