A night-time rendering of the completed Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center site. (Courtesy of REX Architecture)
When Perelman Performing Arts Center President Maggie Boepple was first hired to oversee the construction of the venue at the World Trade Center site five years ago, her vision for the theater began not with a set goal, but with specific questions.
“What does New York not have?” Boepple said, describing her approach to the project. “What does it need? What does downtown want?”
The center was quick to begin a process that would eventually see Joshua Prince-Ramus, principle at REX Architecture, designing the performing arts center. Prince-Ramus said that the usual competitive process between designers was sidelined for what he called “almost like a mock concept design. And I say mock because Maggie and her team were very clear that the design results of the competition may or may not be the design they went with, it was more about seeing how we could collaborate together.”
After seeing how the relationship between the designer and the board behind the center would mesh in terms of responsiveness and production, Prince-Ramus was happy to see an encouragement of ideas “beyond what either of us could do or imagine independently,” calling the process “really appreciated and intelligent.”
Rendering of an interior view of Perelman Center. (Courtesy of REX Architecture)
So began a journey to a design to meet specifications Prince-Ramus said needed to “be flexible enough to meet the variable demands and desires of the entire New York arts community.” As a production house that will see its own original work created within, Prince-Ramus said that two forms of technology will be at work within the venue: one aimed at the flexibility of reconfiguring the auditorium and seating capacity, another at features that will allow for new approaches to the performing arts. He said these include communication systems that will allow production teams to co-produce with venues all over the world, as well as the capacity to project the images of performers from outside of the country on-stage via hologram.
The conceptualization process turned out a 90,000 square foot building with three auditoriums separated by scene-docks, which can double as storage, as well as additional stages between the different auditoriums. “That allows for 11 possible dimensions and proportions,” said Prince-Ramus, “each of which can have an almost infinite number of stage audience configurations.”
The auditoriums vary in seating capacity, boasting 99, 250, and 450 seats each. Maximum capacity will change as the configuration of the auditoriums is adjusted, ranging from 99 to1,200 and nearly everything in between.
As cutting edge as the technology will be, Prince-Ramus was quick to say that they are “not inventing anything,” and instead placed an emphasis on dependability and effectiveness.
“While the theaters themselves will be extremely flexible, they’re not highly mechanized things that will break and need adjusting,” Prince-Ramus said. “The building has to be a workhorse, and it has to be able to be reconfigured easily and quickly, and it can’t afford things to be breaking.” He joked a bit about the simplicity of these systems, calling them, “I say this in the best sense of the word, almost dumb.”
Boepple said that a thorough cost estimate at the current conceptual phase set the projected cost of the center at $243 million. She qualified the price by saying that “you don’t really know what it’s going to cost until you advance to a schematic design, which will be this December,” at which point some items may cost more or less and change the budget. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2020.
When it comes to the history of the location itself, Boepple said that memorializing the tragic day in 2001 and the lives lost does not fall under the purview of the Perelman Center. Even so, that does not mean the reality of the site is not with them. As the memorial and museum close by focus on September 11th, Boepple said, “we go on living, and the performing arts center is about that…. We have to be the best performing arts center we can be. That’s how we honor people.”