OMA en Norman Foster bouwen twee culturele gebouwen
17 juni 2004, 17:04
De twee bureaus presenteerden hun concepten afgelopen week in Dallas. De bouw start pas in 2006 nadat de parkeergarage onder het geheel is gebouwd. In 2009 worden de gebouwen afgerond.
Artikel Dallas Centre performing arts
Two of the world’s preeminent architectural firms, Foster and Partners and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, will today unveil the concept designs of Dallas’ Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre, the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation announced.
London-based Foster and Partners – known for its work on such projects as the Great Court of the British Museum in London, the world’s largest airport in Hong Kong and the new German Parliament Building in Berlin – is the design architect for Dallas’ Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House. The firm’s founder, Norman Foster, and Senior Design Partner Spencer de Grey, both internationally acclaimed architects, are leading the project. Lord Foster was the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, the architecture equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), with offices in Rotterdam, Netherlands and New York City, is the design architect for the Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre. OMA is responsible for the design of such world-class facilities as the Rotterdam Kunsthal in the Netherlands and the Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas, Nev., in the United States. Other projects include the recently opened Seattle Central Library in Seattle, WA, in the United States. OMA founder and world-renowned architect Rem Koolhaas and Principal-in-Charge Joshua Ramus are leading the design of the Dallas theater project. Mr. Koolhaas was the 2000 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.
Hundreds are expected to attend when Mr. Ramus of OMA publicly presents the renderings and conceptual design of the Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre from 10 to 11:30 a.m. CST at Dallas’ Belo Pavilion, 2101 Ross Ave., in Dallas, Texas. From 1 to 2:30 p.m. CST at the same location, Mr. de Grey of Foster and Partners will introduce architectural renderings and concept designs of the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House.
The opera house and theater facilities are the first of five venues that will comprise the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, an estimated $275 million project that is the largest public/private cultural initiative ever undertaken in the North Texas region. Half way into the capital campaign, approximately $170 million has been raised for the design and construction of the facilities.
When completed in 2009, the Center will offer world-class settings for performances of opera, musical theater, classic and experimental theater, ballet, other forms of dance, and first-run Broadway productions. The Center’s five venues will also become the main stage production facilities for The Dallas Opera, the Dallas Theater Center, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Texas Ballet Theater, Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico, and many of the other performing arts organizations that serve Dallas and surrounding areas.
Once the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is constructed, Dallas will be the only city in the world that has four buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects located in one contiguous block, including the Nasher Sculpture Center designed by Renzo Piano, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center designed by I.M. Pei, the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House designed by Lord Foster, and the Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre designed by Mr. Koolhaas.
“The conceptual designs that will be unveiled today of the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre represent the work of the most visionary, advanced and brilliant architectural minds working today,” said Howard Hallam, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation. “These two buildings will set a worldwide standard for opera and theater facilities for many decades to come. Along with the other venues that will comprise the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, they will propel Dallas to be among the world’s top cities for the performing arts.”
Bill Lively, Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation President and CEO, said, “The bold new concepts for the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre are a testament to the leadership, support and teamwork of the Dallas community and the many donors who have selflessly contributed to the Foundation’s campaign to build the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.”
“This campaign is already the most successful fund-raising initiative supporting the construction of cultural facilities in the history of Dallas and the region,” Lively added. “The enthusiasm and generosity that has been demonstrated by families, individual contributors and corporations toward this campaign will serve to elevate Dallas’ reputation as a leading international city of culture, business and the arts. The effort will not only result in enormous cultural benefits, but is estimated to infuse $170 million into the local economy and generate 2,800 new jobs.”
Following are select, advance details of what will be presented later today in Dallas about both of these world-class performing arts facilities.
Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre
Designed to be one of the world’s most innovative theater facilities, the Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre will represent the ultimate union of architectural function and form in modern performing arts.
The 11-story and one-sublevel building will feature an unprecedented “stacked,” vertically organized design that completely rethinks the traditional form of theater. In a typical theater setting, non-performance support spaces such as rehearsal rooms, staff offices, costume/makeup rooms and other areas wrap around the stage house. Such ancillary spaces in the Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre will instead be located either above or below the auditorium, enabling maximum interaction and flexibility.
The 74,915-square-foot facility’s advanced mechanized systems will enable artistic directors to rapidly change the venue to a wide array of configurations, including proscenium, thrust, flat floor, traverse and others. It will seat approximately 600 people, depending on the stage configuration.
The interchangeable structural components of the building will allow for multiple outside pedestrian views into the interior of the facility, as well as different interior audience views of outside surrounding areas.
The Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre will serve as a new gateway to Dallas’ Arts District from the central business district. It will be located on the south side of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts’ Grand Plaza, bounded by Flora, Leonard, Ross and Jack Evans streets.
Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House
Seating an audience of 2,200, the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is designed to be the standard upon which all 21st Century opera houses will be measured. The rich exterior red-stained drum of its auditorium will serve as a distinctive focal point of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts’ Grand Plaza, with a 60-foot-high curved glass wall giving interior views of the facility’s public concourse, upper-level foyers and grand staircase.
The 198,000-square-foot building is conceived from the inside out, with the acoustical dynamics and the configuration of performance and non-performance support spaces being the central foundation of its design. Conceived to be a uniquely modern version of the traditional “horseshoe” opera house configuration, the facility will offer the best possible acoustical environment.
In addition, the building will have a publicly welcoming design in which the transition between the adjacent outdoor Grand Plaza, the Annette Strauss Artist Square and the building’s foyer and auditorium will be seamlessly integrated. The building will encapsulate ecological responsibilities and sustainability.
The elegant canopy that will stretch from the the auditorium over portions of the Grand Plaza and outdoor public spaces will create an environmentally controlled civic space that will be unique among the world’s opera houses. This emphasis on pedestrian flow and integrating public spaces with the urban fabric of the city is similar to other Foster and Partners projects, including the Carré d’ Art Museum project in Nîmes, France, and London’s Great Court of the British Museum and the redesigned Trafalgar Square.
The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House will be located on the north side of Flora Street, south of Woodall Rodgers Freeway and adjacent to the famed Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts and the Annette Strauss Artist Square.