University of Michigan, Hill Auditorium

University of Michigan, Hill Auditorium

Designed by Albert Kahn and completed in 1913, Hill Auditorium is a masterpiece of Classic Revival architecture. Transforming an historic gem into a modern performance venue and retaining its original character, the team restored significant architectural details and features, replaced seating to increase patron comfort and accessibility, upgraded building systems to meet code compliance and replaced the building’s mechanical and electrical systems.

The principal challenge was to preserve and restore the building while introducing new stage lighting and rigging systems. In addition to our involvement in performance lighting, rigging, stage and support areas, FDA helped to reconfigure the room for comfort and accessibility for disabled patrons, insuring numerous opportunities for seating throughout the room, regardless of mobility or ADA issues.

The project received an Honor Awards for Outstanding Architecture from the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Project Details
  • Client: University of Michigan
  • Architect: Quinn Evans
  • Arch. of Record: Albert Kahn + Assoc
  • Completion Year: 2004
  • Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Acoustician: Kirkegaard & Associates
  • Capacity: 3,538 seats

Links

University of Maine Farmington, Emery Community Arts Center

University of Maine Farmington

Emery Community Arts Center

The Emery Community Arts Center at University of Maine, Farmington is a true collaborative arts space, incorporating both a wide variety of art forms and a combination of user groups from the school and the town.

The building thoughtfully encourages interdisciplinary cooperation in its overall design and also within each of its spaces. FDA worked hard to design a theatre space that would elegantly solve the many puzzles that small, multipurpose spaces present. Used mostly for dance, music, and drama, the theatre is equipped with a 1,600-square-foot wired gallery which creates an additional performance space. A dramatic interior corridor connects Emery with the existing Alumni Theater. The movable seating platforms make the theatre an ideal place for events and experimental performances. The new facility provides much-needed lobby space and handicap accessibility for the adjacent Alumni Theater. The Emery Center also includes an art gallery for 3D and traditional media, and a wired gallery for film, audio, and other digital media.

The building distinguishes itself on campus with the striking combination of contemporary design and beautifully-rendered references to local building materials and techniques.

Project Details
  • Client: University of Maine
  • Architect: designLAB
  • Completion Year: 2011
  • Location: Farmington, Maine
  • Capacity: 160 seats

Links

Regional Center for the Arts, Trumbull

Regional Center for the Arts, Trumbull

The Regional Center for the Arts (RCA) is a part time public interdistrict magnet high school for Fairfield County students interested in the performing arts. RCA promotes voluntary integration by encouraging collaboration and cooperation among socioeconomic and ethnically diverse school district.

In the fall of 2007, C.E.S. opened a brand-new state-of-the-art facility for RCA students. Located at 23 Oakview Drive in Trumbull, the new Regional Center for the Arts building has a 250-seat main stage, a 100-seat intimate studio theatre, seven classrooms for music, musical theatre, acting and voice, six dance studios, and two music rooms to accommodate music ensemble and jazz band rehearsals.

Currently, 212 high school students in grades 9 -12 from Bridgeport, Fairfield, Trumbull, Norwalk, Greenwich, Stamford, Stratford, New Canaan, Monroe, Darien, Fairfield, Wilton, Ridgefield, and Shelton school districts attend.

Project Details
  • Client: Cooperative Educational Services
  • Architect: JCJ Architects
  • Arch. of Record: Wiles Architect
  • Completion Year: 2007
  • Location: Trumbull, Connecticut
  • Acoustician: Jaffe Holden Acoustics
  • Building Size: 49,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 250 seats

Links

Transylvania University, Lucille C. Little Theater

Transylvania University

Lucille C. Little Theater

This technically innovative facility, completed in 1999, provides teaching and performance space for the Transylvania University drama program. The 150-seat theater has movable seating risers that permit a variety of performance and seating configurations, from traditional proscenium-style, thrust, arena, in-the-round and anything in between. The space features include a computerized lighting and sound system, a removable floor section, and a wire rope grid that allows students to safely hang lights and scenery without the use of ladders or lifts.

This flexible studio theater includes storage areas, a scene shop area and tech office, two dressing rooms, a green room, a kitchen, a well-equipped sound and light booth, and a spacious lobby.

Project Details
  • Client: Transylvania University
  • Architect: Johnson Romanowitz Architects
  • Completion Year: 1999
  • Location: Lexington, Kentucky
  • Acoustician: Acoustic Dimensions
  • Building Size: 11,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 200 seats

Links

Tom Patterson Theatre

Tom Patterson Theatre

At the heart of the building, the theatre is designed to honor all that is cherished about the beloved Tom Patterson; the unique elongated thrust stage, the pronounced stepping of the tiers that provide clear sightlines, and the unparalleled intimacy. The curved ceiling embraces the patrons below, and is expressed as a basketed surface of textured dark wooden planks. Between each plank, acoustic treatment and concealed air slots provide all the technical rigor to achieve a sophisticated theatre environment. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, a network of suspended technical catwalks replete with elegant wooden acoustic baffles will form a hanging ‘chandelier’ that provides flexibility and access to lighting and rigging positions for all performances. The overall design creates an architecture presenting a unified whole, while at the same time enabling each programmatic element — the lobby, education spaces, and Forum — to have distinct experiences nestled within.

Project Details
  • Client: The Stratford Festival
  • Architect: Hariri Pontarini
  • Completion Year: 2020
  • Location: Stratford, Ontario
  • Acoustician: Aercoustics
  • Building Size: 75,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 600 seats

Links

Jacksonville Center for the Performing Arts

Jacksonville Center for the Performing Arts

(Formerly Times Union Performing Arts Center)

The City of Jacksonville and the design team of FDA, KBJ Architects and acousticians Kirkegaard & Associates reconstructed the outdated, 31-year old civic auditorium, replacing it with a state-of-the-art performance space with multiple venues.

The new Center now presents a widely expanded range of performing arts events in three spaces. The existing 3,150-seat auditorium was reconstructed as the 2,850 seat Moran Theater, for Broadway touring shows, opera, and ballet. New “sidewall” seating tiers and reconfigured seating levels present a much more intimate and lively interior in the large hall.

Additionally, a new 1,800-seat dedicated concert hall, Jacoby Symphony Hall, was designed for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Finally, critical inadequacies in public rest rooms, wheelchair access, performer accommodations, service, and delivery were redressed.

Project Details
  • Client: City of Jacksonville
  • Architect: Rothman Rothman Heineman
  • Arch. of Record: KBJ Architects, Inc.
  • Completion Year: 1997
  • Location: Jacksonville, Florida
  • Acoustician: Kirkegaard & Associates
  • Building Size: 295,000 s.f.

Links

The Mandell School

The Mandell School

The now-closed Mandell School was a private K-8 and pre-school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As a school that took pride in its commitment to the arts, Mandell featured a professional-grade black box theater.

Designed for productions with very simple technical requirements, but at the same time had potential through professional-grade equipment and infrastructure to accommodate more sophisticated events and users (i.e.: outside rentals or visiting artists).

FDA specified rigging, lighting, and AV systems, as well as a flexible riser system for different seating configurations.

The black box space had a tension wire grid — unusual for a K-8 school — providing safe access to theatrical lighting. Students with proper supervision could safely and appropriately work up on the grid. Additionally, the grid was especially useful for more technically sophisticated professional or rental events.

Project Details
  • Client:The Mandell School
  • Architect: Nelligan White Architects
  • Completion Year: 2014
  • Location: New York, New York
  • Building Size: 60,000 s.f.

Texas Christian University, Walsh Center for the Performing Arts

Texas Christian University,

Walsh Center for the Performing Arts

325-seat and 200-seat theatres added to the Music and Drama Departments at Texas Christian University (TCU) helped to create a state-of-the-art performing arts center, now called the Walsh Center for the Performing Arts. FDA also collaborated with the university and the architect to arrange backstage support spaces that fully integrate the existing and new theatres into a single efficient performing arts complex.

A scene shop that FDA helped to lay out for the Center supports the existing university theatre, Landreth Hall as well as these theatres. The PepsiCo Recital hall interiors are finished in travertine, limestone, granite, and clay tile as a counterpoint to older buildings on the TCU campus. The palette creates what architect calls “a small enclosure with a grand sound.”

The smaller Hayes Theatre gives students an experimental space for innovative and non traditional productions.

Project Details
  • Client: Music and Drama Departments, TCU
  • Architect: Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates
  • Arch. of Record: KVG Gideon Toal, Inc.
  • Completion Year: 1998
  • Location: Fort Worth, Texas
  • Acoustician: Jaffe Holden Acoustics
  • Building Size: 56,000 s.f.

Links

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Performing Arts Center

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Performing Arts Center

The Texas A&M Performing Arts Center reflects this University’s commitment to enhancing the cultural environment on campus, cultivating new curricula in the performing arts, and expanding the cultural environment throughout Corpus Christi and South Texas.

The 1,500-seat concert hall completed in Phase 1 provides a venue for a wide variety of student and professional performances. In Phase 2, a 500-seat proscenium theater with stagehouse will be added to the south of the building, connecting the Performing Arts Center with an existing Center for the Arts.

The program called for ten practice rooms, a percussion studio, music instruction classroom, rehearsal room, and faculty offices. These spaces are housed to the south of the concert hall, in a rectilinear space that echoes the form of the adjacent Center for the Arts. Its configuration also creates a dedicated service court used by both buildings.

To the east new dressing rooms and a new art instruction classroom are planned as part of the second phase addition to the Center for the Arts. The relationship of the varied building components results in a series of small-scale green spaces that both respond to and enhance the character of the campus.

Project Details
  • Client: Texas A&M University
  • Architect: Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Assoc.
  • Arch. of Record: Cotton Landreth Kramer Assoc.
  • Completion Year: 2005
  • Location: Corpus Christi, Texas
  • Acoustician: Jaffe Holden Acoustics
  • Building Size: 55,000 s.f.
  • Capacity: 1,500 seats

Links

Taconic Hills Central School, Performing Arts Center

Taconic Hills Central School, Performing Arts Center

This 950-seat proscenium theatre is more than meets the eye: the back wall of the stage house opens to an outdoor amphitheater on the other side. The amphitheatre shares the same stage and back of house support spaces as the main auditorium, and adds 300 to the seat count.

The space is also unusual in that it is not only a secondary school theatre, but also a true community arts center. One of the largest theatres in Columbia County, Taconic Central School’s Performing Arts Center provides the students and community with a wide range of arts and cultural programs, as well as the unique opportunity to generate revenue through community uses.

Project Details
  • Client: Taconic Hills Central High School
  • Architect: Rhinebeck Architecture & Planning
  • Completion Year: 1999
  • Location: Craryville, New York
  • Capacity: 950 seats

Links

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