The official renderings, of World Trade Center Performing Arts Center in New York, have been revealed, and they showcase a nearly 8,361.27-square-foot, translucent veined marble cube that both stands out as an impressive piece of cultural architecture and co-exists with the other structures on the WTC complex such as the 9/11 Museum and transportation hub.

The board of directors of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (The Perelman Center) and President & Director Maggie Boepple unveiled the design for the new performing arts center, located at the World Trade Center site.  Set to open in 2020, The Perelman Center will produce and premiere theater, dance, music, film, opera, and multidisciplinary works. After stalling for years, the €216.30 million World Trade Center Performing Arts Center started to make headway in recent months, first with a decision to go with REX as the designers and then with a €66.76 million gift from Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Ronald O. Perelman.

According to a press release from developer Silverstein Properties, “The Perelman Center is inspired by the Center’s mission to defy experiential expectations. Its design cues were taken from [an] aim to foster artistic risk, incubate original productions, provide unparalleled flexibility, and deliver the most technologically advanced and digitally connected spaces for creative performance.”
 

Description of the proyect by REX

On the most significant site in New York City, the Ronald O.  Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center (The Perelman Center ) will premiere works of theater, dance, music, film, and opera, transforming Lower Manhattan into a  vibrant, global cultural heart. The design is inspired by The  Perelman Center’s mission to defy experiential expectations. Its concept embodies  the  Center’s  aim to foster artistic risk, original local productions, and worldwide collaborations; stand as the most technologically connected and advanced venue in the world; and engage the local community. The  keystone  and  final piece of the World Trade Center master plan, The Perelman Center  embraces creation and memory with  respectful individuality.

The Rough in a Diamond
Amidst gleaming glass towers  on the north side of the 9/11 Memorial, The Perelman Center is a  pure form, rotated and  elevated  to accommodate complex below - grade constraints, address the 9/11 Museum and  transportation hub, and engage the site’s main pedestrian streets of Greenwich and Fulton. The edifice is w rapped in translucent, veined marble — from the same  Vermont  quarry as the U.S. Supreme Court building and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial — laminated within insulated glass. By day, the volume is an elegant, book - matched stone edifice, whose simplicity and traditional material acknowledge the solemnity of its context. Daylight illuminates the interior through the marble façade. By night, this monolith dematerializes: silhouettes of human movement and theatrical configurations animate the glowing  enclosure,  an invitingly subtle revelation of the creative energy  in side. 

While the building’s pristine exterior befits the site, its muscular, utilitarian interior expresses the workhorse quality necessary for the changing nature of The Perelman Center’s artistic  needs. Steel walls, concrete trusses,  wood floors,  perforated plywood  panels, and other rugged ly beautiful  materials encourage the frequent  transformation of scenery,  stage - audience configurations, and even the  restaurant/bar and lobby. The building’s material duality — elegant exterior  and robust interior — forms ‘The Rough in a Diamond.’

Multi-Form, Multi-Procession, and Experiential Surprise: The Play Level
The Perelman Center is organized in three levels — Public (bottom), Performer (middle), and Play (top). The layout and character of the Play Level drive the design of the entire building.  

The Play Level is a pioneering, highly adaptable performance palette that combines both multi-form and multi-processional flexibility. It holds three auditoria (499-, 250-, and 99-person) and a rehearsal room which can double as a fourth venue. Using large, acoustic, guillotine walls that separate them, the three auditoria can be combined to form seven additional, unique performance spaces for a total of eleven arrangements —including the rehearsal room venue - which  can all  adopt manifold stage - audience configurations. On the perimeters of the rehearsal room and the 250- and 99-person auditoria, a coustic glass walls with integrated black-out  blinds  provide natural light  into  performance s and rehearsals, and enable these rooms to be rented for events.

Directors can further choreograph the audience’s entire experience through a zone of mutability around the auditoria.  Acoustic doors between scene docks, scene assemblies, and a circulation loop at the floor’s periphery allow directors to apportion any of these areas as front - or back-of-house, and to form unexpected lobbies and performance ante-chambers. Also key to these permutations, baffles pivoting from the auditoria’s exterior walls can function as traffic valves to direct the audience into or past an auditorium’s entrance, or block access to anyone but performers. And finally, the four elevator/ stair couplets can be  used individually or in combination, creating unexpected access sequences from the lobby to the auditoria in any of their varied formations.  

As a result of this immense flexibility, the Play Level is a constant source of surprise for patrons, a ‘Mystery Box’ whose experiences are scripted entirely by each director’s imagination.  

Direct Access and Inspiring Environment: The  Performer Level
Right below the Play Level, the  Performer Level contains all support areas for performances and artists, such as trap, dressing rooms, green room, musician room, quiet room, wig storage,  and  costume shop . Artists have direct, private  access to the Play Level via  a dedicated elevator/stair couplet, or — if  blurring the line between performer and patron is  desired — the other three public couplets. Unlike most performance venues which place performer and other back-of-house areas below grade, artists are at the core of The Perelman Center, with generous accom m odations and daylight filtered through the ‘stone-glass’ façade.

Restaurant /Bar,  Informal Stage, and  Community  Living  Room: The  Public Level
In contrast to the ticketed areas of the Play Level and the secure areas of the Performer Level, the functions of the Public Level can be enjoyed by anyone, anytime. This floor includes a lobby with information desk and coat check, and a restaurant/bar that can transform into a cabaret, a dance podium, a performance art space, or a ‘living room’ for Lower Manhattan community events such as voting. The restaurant/bar—used for refreshments during performance intermissions—extends north to an exterior terrace with views over the new sculpture garden nestled between The Perelman Center and World Trade Center  Tower 1.

The  Perelman Center’s  exterior staircase brings theater patrons and visitors from the lobby back down to  the street below. Half this grand stair offers generous seating for  people who want to linger,  watch the bustling city around, or contemplate the beautiful memorial across Fulton  Street. With its artistic freedom, openness to the community, pure form, and material duality, The Perelman Center  galvanizes  the culture of New York City’s lower downtown, and asserts its place amongst the World Trade Center’s constellation of world-class buildings.

 

 

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Architects
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Executive architect
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Davis Brody Bond
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Competition team
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Giannantonio Bongiorno, Adam Chizmar (PL), Alberto Cumerlato, Mahasti Fakourbayat, Alysen Hiller Fiore (PL), Gabriel Jewell-Vitale, Min Kim, Dominyka Mineikyte, Elizabeth Nichols, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Raul Rodriguez, Michal Sapko, Emma Silverblatt, Elina Spruza, Michele Tonizzo, Vaidotas Vaiciulis, Michael Volk, Cristina Webb.
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Project team
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Adam Chizmar (PL), Maur Dessauvage, Alysen Hiller Fiore (PL), Sebastian Hofmeister, Suemin Jeon, Claire Kuang, Kirby Liu, Weronika Marciniak, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Vaidotas Vaiciulis.
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Consultans
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Arup, CCI, Charcoalblue, Cost Plus, Ducibella Venter & Santore, Front, Jaros Baum & Bolles, Jenkins & Huntington, Magnusson Klemencic, RWDI, Sciame, Silman, Thornton Tomasetti / Weidlinger, Threshold, Wilson Ihrig.
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Client
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Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center.
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Area
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8,400 sqm.
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REX is an internationally acclaimed architecture firm in New York City led by Joshua Prince-Ramus. REX—whose name signifies a re-appraisal (RE) of architecture (X)—consistently challenges and advances building typologies, and promotes the agency of architecture. REX and Joshua's work has been recognized with the profession’s top accolades, including the 2015 Marcus Prize, bestowed upon architects “on a trajectory to greatness,” two American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Honor Awards, a U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology National Honor Award, an American Library Association National Building Award, and two American Council of Engineering Companies’ National Gold Awards.

Joshua Prince-Ramus is the founding principal and president of REX, where he leads the design of all projects. Joshua was the founding partner of OMA New York—the American affiliate of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture/Rem Koolhaas—until he rebranded that firm as REX in 2006. While REX was still known as OMA New York, Joshua was partner-in-charge of the Seattle Central Library and the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas, among many other cultural projects.

A former member of the TED Brain Trust, Joshua has shared REX’s design methodologies at the TED2006 and TEDxSMU conferences. He is the most recent recipient of the Marcus Prize, bestowed upon architects "on a trajectory to greatness.” Joshua has been credited as one of the “5 greatest architects under 50” by The Huffington Post, one of the world’s most influential young architects by Wallpaper*, and one of the twenty most influential players in design by Fast Company; he was also listed among “The 20 Essential Young Architects” by ICON magazine and featured as one of the “Best and Brightest” by Esquire magazine.

Joshua is a frequent contributor to architectural academia, convinced that—if architecture is to evolve—professionals have a responsibility to improve the profession from within. He has been Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale University and Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University, and has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Syracuse University. He lectures frequently at universities and symposiums around the world.

Joshua holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University, where he earned the inaugural Araldo Cossutta Fellowship and the SOM Fellowship, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with distinction in the major, magna cum laude, from Yale University. He is a registered architect in the U.S. and the Netherlands, and is NCARB certified.
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