Inside The Glowing Theater Opposite The 9/11 Memorial | Unique Spaces | Architectural Digest

[Music] the Pearlman Performing Arts Center is a new Performing Arts Center that sits just adjacent to the 911 memorial it's wrapped in a marble from Portugal during the day it does project a kind of sobriety but then in the evenings it dematerializes and glows and has this incredible orange glow Amber glow that asserts itself within the [Music] context at the core of the building is a really exciting novel configuration of auditoria that can extend and combine to create 10 possible different proportions and over 62 different stage audience configurations the rapper basically turns the building into a mystery box my name is Joshua RIS I'm the founding principal of Rex we're the design architect for the Pearlman Performing Arts Center the World Trade Center the stone is what we call BI a book Matched meaning it's the same around a horizontal axis and it's also the same around a vertical axis there are just under 5,000 tiles the stone is half an inch 12 mm thick and it's actually laminated between two pieces of glass the stone has iron in it that's actually what creates that kind of Amber glow so the facade is illuminated by a series of chandeliers that run around this perimeter so the chandeliers are designed as Chevrons and they have linear elements on them and the top and the bottom one are the brightest and they shine up and shine down the farthest distance and as the linear elements get closer and closer and closer to horizontal they get slightly dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer with the effect that the the building has a relatively uniform illumination at night it's our belief that every time someone comes to the building they are likely to see something they didn't [Music] expect while this is the least likely configuration you'll ever see it in um it's in some ways it's the best configuration to get a sense of the lay of the land nominally we have three auditoria there is the zucati that's 450 seats the Nicholls that's 250 seats and the Duke that is 99 seats that is what we call the zucati this zone right here is one of the scen docks that is the Nickels the space over here between them is the next scen do and then the small one is the Duke the floor that I'm standing on can be flat as you see but it can take all different kinds of geometries including a rake that goes all the way up to the first balcony so there would be scenarios in which everything that I'm standing in right now is all seating and in that case you would be looking at the Nickels as really a deep end stage so that's the first thing there is four massive acoustic Guillotine walls one there and one there those are each 46 tons each and then there's a third and a fourth there in addition this element and this element that element and that element are movable balconies right now you're seeing the Horseshoe and the Wiest configuration they could be brought in to make a tight theater in the round like a Shakespearean theater in the round directly beneath this space is what we're called the Trap this is one of the most I think spectacular spaces in the building which no one will ever see a trap is an underfloor area that allows you to build different geometries of a stage what's more unique about this than most is that it is automated so the purpose of this is to allow the floor of the zucati to be able to either take different stage configurations or different seating configurations and all of that happens using these things that we call Galla lifts these are lift mechanisms and so the purpose of these is to allow the floors to move up to two floors in height vertically without taking up any space beneath it so these cylinders grow out of this drum like magic I think how a lot of people like to think about you know good building it will reveal itself to over time we actually hope that the building will never reveal itself to you that the more you use it the more mystified you will be the more magical the experience will be the more you will stand outside stare up at this glowing Amber Cube and wonder how on Earth are all those different things happening in this one relatively small [Music] building we are 2 weeks out from opening we're only a couple weeks from opening every day that I come down here it's looking better and better I'm David Rockwell I designed the lobby at the Pearlman the memorial was a kind of Sacred Space and this building would not be a distraction to that but would have a kind of quiet dignity about it and that life inside the building would reveal itself when you got in we're on the staircase that leads you into the pack and it's a very dramatic way to enter and it starts with a ceiling which is the first thing you you're coming up a steep set of stairs and you see the ceiling and these wood ribs with integrated lighting that move in the same axis as the building so the ceiling also provides a function way finding that when a show starts the rest of the lights can dim and a little pre-show ritual and the ribs that go east west can get brighter and you'll just kind of follow the light so in terms of thinking of this as a piece of theater and I always look at the overlap between architecture and theater once we establish this field of ribs going north south we designed them in a way that they move around the cross bracing of the building so circulation is something that happens in these wider expanses but also as you get into the restaurant circulation allows you to move through and see these pockets of [Music] seating you know there's been so much written about New York being a great place for public theater and people watching I think this table and this bench is a great place to have a drink and wait for your seat and kind of look at the swirl of action happening around it restaurant seats Hotel seats tend to be defined by how long you want someone to sit in this seat this is like a 15minute perch also generally I find people want to sit with their back against a wall or a banket so if you look at the way the room's laid out there are some smaller areas that that feel like a dining room within a dining room there are areas that are very much in the public flow I think the strongest analogy between a restaurant and a meal and a theater piece is they live primarily in your memory all of the work that goes into that experience lives in some collective memory you have about the experience I want people when they leave this restaurant to feel welcomed I want them to feel energized I'd like them to feel like they were at this very special place for special meal that happens either before or after the show they say I always found the most interesting part of any place that I live is performance areas and I think this is a piece of New York that will be very welcome dating back to the original master plan there was always a Performing Art Center on this site this would be the place in which the restorative power of art would be the Counterpoint to the incredible commemoration that was happening directly adjacent I lived a couple blocks away North on Granite Street during the attacks so for me personally working here came with a lot of we have to do something that we're exceptionally proud of we have to do something that we gave the full measure of our abilities I've lived in lower Manhattan for more than three decades and was very much a New Yorker during 9/11 and was part of a number of rebuilding initiatives so when we were invited to participate in this it was an immediate yes because it is in some ways the final building block and keeps the promise of Arts being a part of this neighborhood that's a really wonderful beautiful thing to participate in now we'll see that come to life what would we hope for this building certainly we hope people to think it's beautiful but Way Beyond that way beyond that we hope that it inspires incredibly talented people to do profound work and that that profound work inspires the public I think globally will be a place that people will come to and when they come here they'll find a place to hang out place to have a conversation about theater a community of people who are interested in the storytelling out side of just the theaters and I think that sense of coming together as an audience will be something that really differentiates the pack from any other facility in New York you know New York has reinvented itself over and over and over and over again it's been this incredible laboratory for architecture and urbanism for hundreds of years and certainly the ambition and scale of this master plan and what was done here participates in that I hope that we've created a building that can live up to the expectations of New [Music] York

Channel: Architectural Digest

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Keywords: arch digest, architectural digest, architectural digest tour, architectural digest unique spaces, architecture, downtown manhattan, downtown new york city, downtown nyc, joshua ramus architect, lower manhattan, modern architecture, new york city theater, nyc theater, one world trade center, perelman performing arts center, perelman performing arts center new york, perelman performing arts center nyc, performing arts, theater design, unique spaces

Id: 7X0P5X4ELXg

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2023