The Red Bull School Is Perfect for All-Nighters

Up until now, Red Bull’s strongest association with education was a Taurine-tinged cocktail for chugging after exams are all done (congratulations, new grads!). But the drink maker wants to actually teach too.

In 1998, the Austrian company asked Many Ameri, Christopher Romberg and Torsten Schmidt, who run a consultancy in Germany called Yadastar, to start a music program. The result was the Red Bull Music Academy, which may be less like a school and more like an extended symposium with dubstep playing in the background. Nowadays, the school is eclipsed by the many public events that also go under its banner—big concerts and talks around New York City with the likes of James Murphy, Erykah Badu, Brian Eno, and Ryuichi Sakamoto (performing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!), all paid for by Red Bull at an unknown sum that few public institutions could ever pay for this stuff.

In any case, the Academy itself, as its online FAQ warns, "is not a sponsored event, but a long-term music initiative." There is in fact an actual school, occupying three floors in a building on West 18th street in New York City, with actual students, learning things. Once this year's session is over, Red Bull plans to occupy the space permanently.

At the start of the second two-week term last week, 31 new participants—DJs and producers picked and flown in by Red Bull from around the world—were heads-down in their laptops and gear, at a facility that feels like a Jurassic Park bunker for the Justice League of musicians. It is unclear how much work actually gets done (there are no deadlines and Red Bull does not own any of the music created), but that is not for lack of resources, including, of course, that red drink (there is a fridge full of the stuff in each student's room).

The lectures from industry legends and the bountiful technology at artists’ disposal would have been enough, but Red Bull, which has never been known to not spend excessive amounts of money on something, went the extra step: the company built out an impressive 38,000 square feet of space, with a large recording studio, a lecture hall, a radio booth, and chill spots, all to foster the learning and creativity they hope takes place when the participants finally get over their hangovers from the previous nights “academic events,” like artist talks and concerts or all-night jam sessions in the Academy's eight "bedroom studios." (They sleep nearby, at the swanky Ace Hotel.)

To make it their own—apart from the stocked fridges and the logos on the walls—Red Bull started by hiring the architect Jeffrey Inaba, the director of the C-Lab think tank at Columbia University’s School of Architecture and a co-editor of the design journal Volume. As a teacher himself, Inaba was acutely aware of the need to design a space that would promote learning and collaboration for the RBMA.

“If you are to look in the future, education is not just going to be online–it’s not just going to be whatever classrooms–it’s probably going to be a combination of online experiences and then really intense short term interpersonal experiences with people in contexts like this," he says. "I think of this as a model for an education scenario that applies to music, but it can also apply to design, architecture, to everything.” The space is designed to be versatile and open—in the tradition of so many new educational and corporate and co-working and incubator spaces—so that some hours can be devoted to working and others to sharing and discussing projects.

Inaba's mission wasn't just to create an intensive learning space that directs energy toward creativity and collaboration, but a place that removed the daily distractions of city life. “Hopefully," he says, "this is a space where you don’t have those kinds of distractions, but you can apply all the stimulus that you have in the city into work. So it’s the idea of this as a focusing space where you can channel stuff into the work you are doing. The idea that, in an education context, it’s a short term intensive thing, it means that you put your life on hold to be able to focus on just one thing. On a day to day level, the idea is that you come in here and focus on what you’re doing."

Collaboration is encouraged, says Inaba, by the use of curved walls on each floor, which "help to channel people" differently. "On the top floor, it’s about curves that create small spaces for 1-6 ppl to collaborate. On the ground floor, it’s the biggest curve, because it’s about getting as many people into one space. The curves also work to channel people towards the auditorium. And then downstairs, it’s a medium sized curve, and the whole idea there is it’s about the performance area–it’s a small size and an interactive space. So that’s the thing that loops these spaces together."

Analogous perhaps to the clubs where the music will be played (or the Red Bull will be drunk), the interior of the school glows with lights. “To create different atmospheres in the space, we really relied on lighting effects," Inaba explains. "We worked with a lighting designer here and each of the spaces has different custom lighting elements. In the main space, it’s rare these days, but those are all neon tubes that were hand fabricated. Those turn on at night, and they produce a really warm light that points down. During the day, there are cooler fluorescent lights pointed up that create more of an ambient environment in response to the daylight. In the radio booth there is an LED programmable system over a fabric that creates a really diffuse light. That whole interior space is painted pink, so we programmed the LEDs to create the same color as the painted interior, to create this continuous atmospheric effect.

“Downstairs in the lounge there are custom led fixtures. It is basically like a piece of string cheese – it’s a long, linear element and the whole thing is illuminated," he adds. "The lighting is really one of the things that I am most proud of here.“

The space designed by Inaba is accented during the RMBA by an art show curated by Ken Farmer—the creative director of Nuit Blanche New York—entitled "Kairos." As Farmer explains, there are two Greek concepts of time. “Chronos represented a qualitative, measurable time–the ticking clock; kairos represented a more qualitative movement—an opportunity to be seized.” This is a very fitting installation for the RBMA, as the participants live and work in a space where interaction is inevitable, collaboration is spatially encouraged, and time is limited.

The art selected for "Kairos" is scattered throughout the building and includes an assortment of visual and conceptual art, including Martin Roth’s collection of terrariums, aquariums, and cages with microphones in them. The microphones allow the sounds to be relayed to speakers that surround a bonsai tree, providing the "ideal" soundscape for growth.

Perhaps the most fitting, however, is Ryder Ripps’ web piece “#hypercurrentliving.” Finally demonstrating what your brain looks like on Red Bull, Ripps’ mission is to knock back cans of the stuff, the non-sugar-free kind, and tweet the ideas he has. Some of my favorites are “office plants for home,” “if you’re having a meeting at your office, hire a temp staffing agency to make your company look bigger,” “edible/wearable bongs,” "a warez tattoo," a “drake flavored toothpaste by jeff koons,” and "gucci mane goes to space." His ideas may not have wings exactly, but they have been retweeted a lot.