ALICE TULLY HALL

On April 16^th, our thesis proseminar professor, Ben Gilmartin, took us on a tour of the newly-renovated Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center here in NYC. Ben is an architect for Diller Scofidio + Renfro and was the leading architect for the redesign of this building.

When we got there, the most obvious thing about the building was its use of glass along the façade, and a giant cantilevered corner of the building which tapered upward spanning over the sidewalk to meet its edge. The original façade had the entrance on the second story, separated from the street by a flight of stairs but this new design is very much about engaging the public and welcoming it into the building especially at the street level. Under the cantilevered corner, the glass façade is set back to widen the sidewalk, creating a sort of public space. The design also treats the ground plane in its intention of public engagement. There is a small stepped grade change which not only happens on the sidewalk, but continues through the glass façade and subtly differentiates the café area from the rest of the font lobby/atrium space. In a way, this grade change allows the public outside to feel as though they’ve entered the building without having stepped foot inside.

As we walked though the main atrium space, we got a good sense of the strong relationship it had with the street. As one sits in the café, the high ceiling and huge glass curtain wall provides views of the city from three sides.

Beyond the main atrium space, there is a glass partition wall with a set of double-doors leading into the auditorium pre-function space. This is a much quieter area where the ceiling drops down to about 12’. It is still visually open to the street through its glass walls but is certainly not as public as the lobby.

In this pre-function space there was an interesting wall which looked perfectly flat from one side but as you moved around it, found that the individual wood strips swerved out at their center opening up not unlike gills. As we would fully understand later, this is perfectly consistent with the ideas of soft transitions imbued in the building’s redesign.

Before entering the auditorium, we went through a what Ben called a “palate-cleansing space”—a small threshold with dim lighting, soft grey wall panels, and muffled acoustics meant to transition you from the public day-lit pre-function area to the more intimate warm-toned enclosed space of the auditorium.

The entire auditorium is composed of a series of wooden panels which are meant to read as a single skin stretched across the wall surfaces of the auditorium. The sweeping curves along this surface create calculated slits and apertures which form the necessary openings for balconies, acoustic panels, and cavities for lighting equipment. Some of the wood panels are translucent and glow a soft reddish hue when the lights behind them are turned on. These particular panels necessitated some engineering because, the panels had to be thin enough to allow light to go through but strong enough to stand the strain of double curves and the expansion/compression from the lighting heat. Ben attempted to demonstrate the final product in its full glory (he tried to get someone to turn the panel lights on for us) but, alas, we were told it was not going to be possible! Ben finished by explaining a number of things about the design process. The complex geometries and tight surface paneling meant that openings for lights, electrical outlets, etc. had to be exact so all the components (from the electrical to the HVAC) were modeled together using some of Frank Gehry’s software to achieve the necessary level of precision.