Building a theater that remakes itself Joshua PrinceRamus

I’m gonna speak to you today about

architectural agency but what I mean by

that is it’s time for architecture to do

things again not just represent things

this is a construction helmet that I

received two years ago at the

groundbreaking of the largest project I

and my firm have ever been involved in I

was thrilled to get it I was thrilled to

be the only person standing onstage was

a shiny silver helmet I thought it

represented the importance of the

architect I stayed thrilled until I got

home through the helmet onto my bed fell

down onto my bed and realized inside

there was an inscription now I think

that this is a great metaphor for the

state of our architecture and architects

today we are for decorative purposes

only now who do we have to blame we can

only blame ourselves over the last 50

years the design of construction

industry has gotten much more complex

has gotten much more litigious and we

architects are cowards and so as we have

faced liability we have stepped back and

back and unfortunately where there is

liability guess what there is power so

eventually we have found ourselves in a

totally marginalized position way over

here now what did we do we’re cowards

but were smart cowards

so we redefined this marginalized

position as the place of architecture we

announced hey architecture it’s over

here in this autonomous language we’re

gonna cede control of processes and we

are going to do something that was

horrible for the profession we actually

created an artificial schism between

creation and execution as if you could

actually create well without knowing how

to execute an ism if you could actually

execute without knowing how to create

now something else happened and that’s

what we began to sell the world that

architecture was created by individuals

creating genius sketches

and that the incredible amount of effort

to deliver those sketches for years and

years and years is not only something to

be derided we would merely write it off

as merely execution now to argue that

that is as absurd as stating that 30

minutes of copulation is the creative

act and 9 months of gestation and God

forbid 24 hours of child labor is merely

execution so what do we architects need

to do we need to stitch back creation

and execution and we need to start

authoring processes again instead of

authoring objects now if we do this I

believe we can go back 50 years and

start rejecting agency social

engineering back into architecture now

there are all kinds of things that we

architects need to learn how to do like

managing contracts learning how to write

contracts understanding procurement

processes understanding the time value

of money and cost estimation but I’m

going to reduce this to the beginning of

the process into three very pedantic

statements the first is take core

positions with your client I know it’s

shocking the architecture would actually

say that the second position is actually

take positions take joint positions with

your client this is a moment in which

you as the architect and your client can

begin to inject vision and agency but it

has to be done together and then only

after this is done are you allowed to do

this begin to put forward architectural

manifestations that manifest those

positions and both owner and architect

alike are empowered to critique those

manifestations based on the positions

that you’ve taken now I believe it’s one

really amazing thing will happen if you

do this I like to call it the lost art

of productively losing control you do

not know what the end result is but I

promise you with enough brain power and

enough passion and enough commitment you

will arrive at conclusions that will

transcend convention and will simply be

something that you could not have

initially or individually conceived of

right now I’m going to reduce all this

to a series of simple dumb sketches

this is the modus operandi that we have

today we roll 120 foot Spartan ie our

vision up to our clients gates of Troy

and we don’t understand why they won’t

let us in right well how about instead

of doing that we roll up to the gates

something they want now this is a little

bit of a dangerous metaphor because of

course we all know that inside other

georgian horse were a bunch of people

with spears so we can change the

metaphor let’s call the Trojan horse the

vessel by which you get through the

gates get through the constraints of a

project at which point you and your

client have the ability to start

considering what you’re going to put

inside that vessel the agency the vision

and if you do that you do that

responsibly

I believe that instead of delivering

Spartans you can deliver maidens and if

I could summarize that all up into one

single sketch it would be this if we are

so good at our craft shouldn’t we be

able to conceive of an architectural

manifestation that slides seamlessly

through the projects and the clients

constraints now with that in mind I’m

going to show a project that’s very dear

to many people in this room well maybe

not the dear but certainly very close to

many of the people in this room and

that’s a project that it’s just about to

open next week the new home for the

Dallas Theater Center the D and Charles

Wiley theater now I’m going to present

it on the same terms issue position and

architectural manifestation

now the first issue that we faced was

that the Dallas Theater Center had a

notoriety that was beyond what you would

expect of someplace outside of the

triumvirate of New York Chicago and

Seattle now this had to do with the

ambitions of the leadership but it also

had to do with something rather unusual

and that was this horrible little

building that they’d been performing in

why was this horrible horrible little

building so important to their renown

and their innovation because they could

do whatever they wanted to to this

building when you’re on Broadway you

cannot tear the proscenium down this

building when an artistic director

wanted to do a cherry orchard and wanted

two people to come out of it well on the

stage that brought a backhoe in and they

simply dug the hole well that’s exciting

and you can start to get the best

artistic director scenic designers and

actors from around the country to come

to perform here because you can do

things you can’t do elsewhere so the

first position we took was hey we as

architects had better not show up and do

a pristine building that doesn’t

engender the same freedoms that this old

dilapidated provided the company the

second issue is a nuance of the first

and that’s that the company and the

building was multiform that meant that

they were able to perform as long as

they had labor be able to go between

proscenium thrust flat floor arena

traverse you name it all they needed is

labor well something happened in fact

something happened to all institutions

around the world it started to become

hard to rate this operational costs

operational budgets so they stopped

having inexpensive labor and eventually

they had to freeze their organization

into something called a bastardized

thrust inium so the second position we

took is that the freedoms that we

provided the ability to move between

stage configurations had better be able

to be done without relying on

operational costs right affordably the

architectural manifestation was frankly

just dumb it was to take all the things

that are known as front of house and

back of house and redefine them as above

house and below house first blush you

think hey it’s crazy what could you

possibly gain we created what we like to

call super fly now super fly the concept

is you take all the freedoms you

normally associate with the flight hour

and you smear them across flight hour in

auditorium suddenly the artistic

director can move between different

stage and audience configurations and

because that flight hours the ability to

pick up all the pristine elements

suddenly the rest of the environment can

be provisional and you can drill cut

nails screw paint and replace with a

minimum of cost but there was a third

advantage that we got by doing this move

it was unexpected and that was that it

freed up the perimeter of the auditorium

and a most unusual way and that provided

the artistic director suddenly the

ability to define suspension of

disbelief so the building of Ford’s

artistic directors the freedom to

conceive of omens any kind of activity

underneath this floating object

but also to challenge the notion of

suspension of disbelief such that in the

last act of Macbeth if he or she wants

you to associate the parable that you’re

seeing with Dallas with your real life

he or she can do so now in order to do

this we and the clients had to do

something fairly remarkable in fact it

really was the clients who had to do it

they had to make a decision based on the

positions we took to redefine the budget

being from two-thirds capital a

architecture and one-third

infrastructure to actually the inverse

two-thirds infrastructure and one-third

capital a architecture that’s a lot for

a client to commit to before you

actually see the fruition of the concept

but based on the positions they took the

educated leap of faith to do so and

effectively we created what we like to

call a theatre machine now that theatre

machine has ability to move between a

whole series of configurations at the

push of a button and a huge stage hands

and short amount of time but it also has

the potential to not only provide multi

form but multi processional sequences

meaning the artistic director doesn’t

necessarily need to go through our lobby

one of the things that we learned when

we visited various theaters is they hate

us architects because they say the first

thing they have to do the first five

minutes of any show is they have to get

our architecture out of the mind of

their patron well now there are

potentials of this building to allow the

artistic director to actually move into

the building without using our

architecture so in fact there’s the

building there’s what we call the draw

you’re going down into our lobby go

through the lobby with our own little

dangly bits whether you like them or not

up through the stair that leads you into

the auditorium but there’s also the

potential to allow people to move

directly from the outside in in this

case suggest and kind of augment

entrance into the interior of the

auditorium and here’s the fruition of

that and actuality these are the two

large pivoting doors will allow people

to move directly from the outside in or

from the inside out performers or

audience alike

now imagine what that could be I have to

say honestly this is not something yet

the building can do because it takes too

long but imagine the freedoms if you

could take this further that in fact you

could consider a vog nary an entry

a first Acton thrust in an ER mission in

Greek a second act in arena and you

leave through our lobby with dangly bits

now that I would say is architecture

performing it is taking the hand of the

architect to actually remove the hand of

the architect in favor of the hand of

the artistic director I’ll go through

the three basic configurations this is

the flat floor configuration you notice

that there’s no proscenium the balconies

have been raised up there are no seats

the floor and the auditorium is flat the

first configuration is easy to

understand the balconies come down you

see that the orchestra begins to have a

rake that’s frontal towards the end

stage and the seats come in the third

configuration is a little harder to

understand here you see that the

balconies actually have been moved out

of the way in order to bring a thrust

into the space and some of the seats

need to actually change their direction

and change the rake to allow that to

happen and I’ll do it again so you can

see it there you see it’s the about

beside balconies for the proscenium and

there it is in the thrust configuration

in order to do that again we needed a

client who’s willing to take educational

risks and they told us one important

thing

you shall not beta test meaning nothing

that we do can we be the first ones to

do it but they were willing for us to

apply technologies from other areas that

already had failsafe mechanisms to this

building and the solution in terms of

the balconies was to use something that

we all know as a scoreboard lift now if

you were to take a scoreboard and drop

it on dirt nowitzki that would be bad if

you were not able to take the scoreboard

out of the arena and be able to do the

Ice Capades in the next night that would

also be bad and so this technology

already had all the failsafe mechanisms

and allowed the theater and our client

to actually do this with confidence that

they would be able to change over the

configurations at will the second

technology that we applied was actually

using things that are you know from the

stage side of an opera house and in this

case what we’re doing is we’re taking

the orchestra floor lifting it up

spinning it changing the rake taking it

back to flat floor changing the rake

again in essence you can begin to define

and viewing angles of people in the

orchestra seating at will right here you

see the chairs being spun around to go

from proscenium or end stage to thrust

configuration the proscenium also as far

as we know this is the first building in

the world in which the proscenium can

entirely fly out of the space here you

see the various acoustic baffles as well

as the flying mechanisms and catwalks

over the auditorium and ultimately up in

the flight tower the scene sets that

allow the transformations to occur as I

said all that was in service of creating

a flexible yet affordable configuration

but we got this other benefit and that

was the ability the perimeter 270

engaged Dallas on the outside here you

see the building in its current state

with the blinds closed this is a trump

LOI actually this is not a curtain these

are vinyl blinds that are integrated

into the windows themselves again with

failsafe mechanisms that can be lifted

such that you can completely demystify

if you chose the operations of the

theater going on behind rehearsals and

so forth but you also have the ability

to allow the audience to see Dallas to

perform with Dallas as the backdrop of

your performance now if I’ll take you

through this is an early concept sketch

take you through a kind of the mixture

of all these things together effectively

you would have something like this you

would be allowed to bring objects or

performers into the Performing chamber

Aida they’re elephants who can bring the

elephants in you would be able to expose

the auditorium to Dallas or vice-versa

Dallas to the auditorium we’d be able to

open portions in order to change the

procession allow people to come in and

out for an intermission or to enter for

the beginning or the end of a

performance as I said all the balconies

can move but they can also be disappear

completely the proscenium can fly you

can bring larger objects into the

chamber itself but most convincingly

when we had to confront the idea of

changing costs from architecture to

infrastructure is something that’s

represented by this and again this is

not all the flexibilities that the

building is actually built but at least

suggest the ideas this building has the

ability in short order to go back to a

flat floor organization such that they

can rent it out now if there’s anyone

here from American Airlines please

consider doing your Christmas party here

that allows the company to raise

operational budgets without having to

compete with other venues with much

larger auditoriums that’s an enormous

benefit so the theater company has the

ability to do totally hermetic light

controlled sound controlled great

acoustics great intimacy Shakespeare but

can also do Beckett with the skyline of

Dallas sitting behind it here it is in a

flat floor configuration the theaters

been going through its kind of paces

here it is in an end stage configuration

it’s actually beautiful there was a rock

band we stood outside trying to see if

the acoustics work and you could see the

guys doing this you couldn’t hear them

it’s very unusual and here it is in a

thrust configuration and last but not

least you see this already has the

ability to create events in order to

generate operational budgets to overcome

the building in fact performing to allow

the company to overcome their biggest

problem I’m going to show you a brief

time-lapse as I said this can be done

with only two people and with a minimum

amount of time this is the first time

that actually the changeover was done

and so there’s literally thousands of

people because everyone’s excited and

want to be a part of it so in a way I

tried to disregard all the thousands of

ants running around and think of it be

done with just a few people

again just a couple people are required

I promise

voila

so just in conclusion a few shots this

is the AT&T Performing Arts Centre’s D

and Charles Wiley theater there it is at

night and last but not least the entire

AT&T Performing Arts Center you can see

the Winspear Opera House in the right

and the D and Charles Wiley theater on

the left and to remind you that here is

an example in which architecture

actually did something but we got to

that conclusion without understanding

where we were going what we knew were a

series of issues that the company and

the client was confronted with and we

took positions with them and it was

through those positions that we began to

take architectural manifestations and we

arrived at conclusion that none of us

literally none of us could ever have

conceived of initially or individually

thank you