AMRO Piano Showroom

Amro Music is a family-owned and long-standing music store in Memphis with a tradition of serving the vast needs of musicians from all genres. Seeking to expand operations, the project involved moving the piano showroom from Amro headquarters to an existing building across the street, which had previously been used for piano storage and repair. As a Steinway & Sons dealer, the showroom required a level of design restraint that allowed the beauty of the pianos to coexist with the architecture of the space, with each supporting and highlighting the best of the other.

The existing building was low, nondescript, and without any hint of architecture. Its roof was pitched to a center ridge, offering hope of achieving a greater sense of volume. Utilizing an existing step in the building slab, one third of the floor plate was reserved for piano storage and repair while the remaining two thirds became the showroom and offices. The showroom is one large room fronting the southern glazed façade looking onto a busy street. Offices form the northern edge of the showroom with glazed walls allowing visibility between the two. Seeking to take advantage of the available volume, the ceiling plane is low as one enters through the glass façade before it transitions to a sloped ceiling rising with the roof pitch. Below the ridge, the ceiling flattens and fragments into “fingers” which serve as open slots through which track lights are suspended. As abstracted piano keys, the ceiling becomes the primary architectural element while also serving an important acoustical role of sound absorption. Additional sound absorption is found in felt panels that offer an implied sense of spatial division between the pianos and keyboards.