Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2008 - 39

Perceiving the generic old theater or auditorium layout
to be photogenic and pre-solved, the architect then often
turns to designing from the outside-in rather than from the
heart of the building outward-probably leading to some
arbitrary exterior design flourish. Looking at the typical performing arts projects of today, the game often seems to involve
a preoccupation with manipulating roof forms. One imagines
the designers spending too much time standing above their
study models looking at surfaces to tweak rather than imagining space and detail as experienced by the public at street and
internal activity levels.
The same problem of derivative and regressive design can
be found in many of our modern concert halls. Here again,
some of our more prominent acoustical design consultants will
impose the same identical hall design on project after project.
(If you tour these, one city's "grand" new hall can be almost
indistinguishable from another's). On the plus side this pre-

and the acoustical planning are not regressive. Examples of
this include new halls in Tokyo Opera City by Takayuki Hidaka
and Leo Beranek, or Nagata's work with numerous halls, most
notably Disney Hall in Los Angeles-and others also in Japan.
Again, the concerns articulated in this article certainly
do not apply across the board-but I still think we must ask
some hard questions: If current art center internal design
tends too much to regressive models, are our architects and
consultants practicing only highly competent manipulation of
luxury materials on a large scale? Have we gotten too used to
throwing money at design problems? Has our publicity-minded contentment with surface impact or imitated glitter lured
us to demand over-sized edifices, very costly to operate, which
by their nature tend to demand a culture of management and
money-raising more than a house for artists? And thus, have we
tended to think less about creating space needed to connect
with imagination, and the poetry of performance?

...schools can all too easily spend money on facilities
out of proportion with the fundamental reason for the
building, namely the instructional and performances
program and the staff to bring it to life.
digested solution will mostly be based on the classical "shoe-box"
rectangular seating volume (and that's good) but again there will
be the sightline dangers of the courtyard form. In addition, the
modern technology-seduced insistence on "tune-ability" added
to such structures often requires the "room within a room"
arrangement consisting of a vast array of doors encircling the
entire seating chamber offering various degrees of acoustical
coupling with extra building volume beyond.
Acoustical consultants now have access to marvelously
sophisticated CAD programs, and concert-hall owners are
asked to spend huge sums on acoustical technology systems,
but does this mean "great acoustics" are really achieved more
often today? Thinking of major concert halls recently built,
mixed reviews for acoustics are still fairly common, tuning can
be imperfectly and inconsistently used, and soon after grand
opening alternative acousticians are asked to tinker with the
original acoustical design. The irony here is that the exemplary
halls today's designers wish to replicate acoustically (the favorites were built in the 1870s to 1890s) were of course designed
without benefit of CAD or massive technical/adjustable systems.
Oddly, this would amount to a "good regressive" design goal in
terms of acoustics (since the standards of comparison occur
in antique venues) struggling to work with progressive tools.
However, in reviews for the objective and subjective impacts
of modern acoustical design, it appears that more promising
results are coming along in halls where both the architecture

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Priorities Problems
Good design involves making good choices. Good architects
and consultants make a habit of welcoming "post-occupancy
evaluation" where the completed project gets a real goingover: a report-card on functionality, on appropriate aesthetics,
and certainly on making the best use of available budget. This
comes down to priorities. And that usually says something about
the interdependence of good design and good (arts-savvy) clients. Odd priorities are often evident in modern arts facilities
designs in the private sector, but there is special urgency about
this in theatres for schools-especially those built with public
funds. These facilities will have a great impact on the audiences
and artists of the future.
I recently inspected a newly-completed high school performing arts building: large, very costly, and clad in deluxe
stone panels rarely seen in school construction. Inside, design
results included such realities as a mostly useless balcony due
to fully obstructed sightlines; a small lobby with disproportionately high ceilings; a stage cut off from service access by surrounding classrooms; no dressing rooms whatsoever; and fly
space above the stage permanently disabled by a tension cable
grid just above the proscenium opening not even allowing
room for masking borders let alone rigging. This story of terribly wrong priorities faults the architect and the theater consultant but also an autocratic school District Superintendent who
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2008
