The EA Blog

Ideas + News

Join us as we unveil the inner workings of EA, offering you an exclusive glimpse into how we think and our creative process.

Ideas

Elevating Fan Experience: Suites, Clubs & VIP Design in Modern Music Venues

In today’s live entertainment landscape, premium and VIP offerings are not a luxury—they’re the business model. Suites, sky decks, and club levels help venues compete for tours, support capital improvements, and give fans new ways to connect with the artists they love.

Ideas

How Small Cities Can Attract Big Tours: Designing Music Venues for Regional Impact

Big tours used to belong almost exclusively to major metros. But over the last decade, smaller cities have started landing A-list acts and multi-night runs that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. The secret is rarely just better marketing. It’s almost always better venues.

Ideas

Designing Restaurants for the Rhythm of Live Entertainment

At Ervin Architecture, we’ve designed both major venues and destination restaurants that live in the same orbit, like KANU in Old Town and projects connected with the Maine Savings Amphitheater in Bangor. Here’s how we think about restaurant design in the context of live entertainment.

Ideas

From Mill Towns to Nightlife Destinations: Adaptive Reuse for Restaurants & Clubs

Across North America, smaller cities and former mill towns are sitting on a quiet superpower: historic building stock. Brick warehouses, timber-framed mercantile structures, and century-old storefronts often sit underused while communities search for ways to bring people—and energy—back downtown.

Ideas

Rooftop Bars, Sky Decks & Premium Terraces: Designing Elevated Hospitality Experiences

Rooftop spaces have quietly become some of the most powerful revenue-generating real estate in hospitality and live entertainment. A great rooftop bar or sky deck can turn a “nice venue” into the place everyone wants to be seen.

Ideas

Designing the Next-Generation Amphitheater: Lessons from Maine Savings Amphitheater

If you ask a fan what they remember about a great concert, it’s almost never the structure. It’s the feeling: the sound cutting clean through the night, the view from their seat, the energy of thousands of people moving as one. The job of an amphitheater architect is to turn those intangible moments into something you can draw, engineer, and build.