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