Hospitality Design - December 2014 - 83

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1. Downtown Brooklyn's
Theater for a New
Audience features a
white, airy lobby with
teak accents.
2. The metal-clad
shapes of Western
Connecticut State
University's Visual
and Performing Arts
Center are designed
to highlight its music,
theater, and visual arts
activities.

3. Copper-colored
concrete panels at
the Wallis Annenberg
Center feature an
abstraction of letters
and envelopes, a nod
to the site's post office
past.

nature of each activity: a compact theater configuration enhances
intimacy; an expansive concert hall heightens the experience of
live music; and the verticality of visual art studios channels natural
light in support of creative concentration," he says. Just as a hotel
lobby brings together diverse demographics, all students interact in a
central, multistory space with an open, elliptical ramp floating
high above.
In New York's Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District, the Theater
for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center (TFANA)-
which opened last year-melds glass curtain walls and metal panels
on the façade; inside, an airy lobby is awash in white with teak
wood accents and Milton Glaser graphics. "The large scale of the
metal panels and the dark color minimizes the joints so the exterior
skin appears as a seamless, opaque surface in contrast to the glass.
The high-gloss finish reflects the neighboring buildings and lends
a dynamic feeling as the light changes throughout the day," says
project architect David Haakenson of New York-based H3 Hardy
Collaboration Architecture.
TFANA's goal, adds Haakenson, was to establish an experimental
black box-meets-Shakespearean-courtyard vibe, wherein "the
black-painted plywood slats on the walls are spaced in a randomized
pattern to provide the appropriate levels of acoustic reflection and
absorption for the spoken word." As audience members climb
the lobby staircase to views of the surrounding Arts Plaza and
neighborhood, they also become a part of the entertainment.
"Designing performing arts spaces requires synthesizing a
number of complex functional requirements, from tons of theatrical
and audiovisual equipment to sight lines and acoustics," Haakenson
explains. Just like hospitality venues must simultaneously flow
and engage guests with visual surprises, "the great challenge as an
architect is orchestrating all of these needs in a way that feels simple
and seamless to the theatergoer, and creates a sense of drama and
anticipation that is still subtle enough that it doesn't detract from
the performance."
Last year, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
opened in Beverly Hills, California on the site of an old post office.
"Conventional wisdom had the main programmatic element-a
500-seat theater-inserted into the original mail workroom, thus
adding a small wing to house all the other pertinent programmatic
elements. We thought of a new way," says Judy Fekete, president
and CEO of Culver City, California-based SPF Architects. Instead,
Bram Goldsmith Theater was built as a new wing, lending "an
opportunity for a dialogue between a historical and new state-of-the5
art modern structure."
The Goldsmith unites the old and the new much like hospitality
projects. For example, its exterior is an abstraction comprising
millions of letters and envelopes formed in copper-colored concrete
panels that reference the site's past life. "A four-by-nine-foot cement
panel, reminding us of the standard four-by-nine envelope, is cut
and sliced and then repeated along the façade. The varying gaps
between the panels reveal the guts of the building and create a sense
that the panels somehow randomly flew onto it as if to symbolize
that the envelopes are returning back to the post office. The result is
a textural pattern that matches in color to the terracotta elements,"
Fekete explains.
One of the biggest obstacles to navigate, she adds, is crafting a
space that simply manages to perform. The same can certainly be
said for hotels and restaurants.

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