Performing Architecture

by Tim McKeough

The words “renovation” and “redesign” fail to capture the scale of changes that have taken place at Alice Tully Hall. Transformation is more accurate; the look and feel of this storied facility is dramatically different. No one should have expected anything less from New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R), in collaboration with FX Fowle.

Founded by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in 1979 (Charles Renfro became a partner in 2004), DS + R is one of the country’s leading conceptual architecture firms. The office works across different media, frequently blending architecture with visual and performance art. Over the past three decades, the firm has focused as much on art installations as on actual buildings—and sometimes it has been difficult to tell the difference between the two.

One of the architects’ best known projects is the Blur Building, created for the Swiss Expo.02. Constructed on stilts in Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the building shunned solid walls in favor of fog: lake water was continuously pumped through an armature of 35,000 high-pressure nozzles to create a white cloud. Upon entering, visitors literally breathed in the building, and were also invited to drink it up at a water bar. The creation illustrated two important recurring themes in Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s work: the idea of architecture as performance, and a focus on human experience. Both of these preoccupations are apparent in the new Alice Tully Hall.

In addition to extensive work at Lincoln Center, Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s recent projects include the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, which opened in 2006; the High Line park in New York, which is presently under construction; a Creative Arts Center for Brown University; and a major new park on New York’s Governors Island.

The firm has won numerous awards, including the 2005 National Design Award in Architecture from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In 1999, Diller and Scofidio were the first architects ever to win a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. The Whitney Museum of American Art hosted a major retrospective in 2003 entitled Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio. The firm’s work has also been shown in many major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Schusev Russian State Museum of Architecture.

With work on Alice Tully Hall complete, Elizabeth Diller recently discussed the metamorphosis.

How did the transformation of Alice Tully Hall begin?
At first, we were only asked to expand the lobby and the box office. Before, Tully was tucked under Juilliard and there was a very, very tiny space for the entrance. It was entirely ill-equipped to deal with large crowds, especially for the Film Society, when there were back-to-back film screenings and one audience would come out and another would need to go in. At some point along the way it became apparent that a major transformation of the lobby demanded that the hall be attended to as well.

What was your concept for the redesign?
The directive was to make it an intimate hall. That was really the keyword: intimate. But how can you take a hall that has 1,100 seats—which is not a small hall—and make it intimate and great for chamber music? Chamber music, by definition, involves smaller groups. We attempted to change the feeling and quality of the whole space. One of the most important elements was to connect the performers with the audience—we wanted to break the division between audience and stage.

To create visual intimacy, we worked to remove any kind of visual interference. When you look at most halls, there are railings, reflector panels, speakers, and this and that, which create all sorts of clutter between the audience and the stage. We wanted to create a singular, high-performance skin that integrated everything and coated the hall. We also took out the knee walls that were separating the various portions of the orchestra level. We think of the skin a little bit like a bespoke material—this wood liner that connects everything together while also shaping the space, both acoustically and physically. It’s acoustically engineered, and it embraces the audience.

What about the glowing walls?
We wanted to push the wood beyond its natural properties and get it to glow, so we kind of bioengineered it in a very particular way. We did so by using the same African moabi veneer we applied throughout the space, but on top of thick resin panels, which happen to have good acoustical properties. In the end, when the surface house lights are on, you can’t see any difference in the material. But when the rear wall lights come up, there’s a blend between the surface lighting and the lighting behind the resin panels where you can see the color and grain of the wood. It’s very beautiful and it has an organic quality to it. We expect this effect will be used during the transition leading up to the beginning of a show. And, in some cases, it may continue through the show. It’s flexible, and can be used differently for different types of performances.

Do you think people will be surprised by the new Alice Tully Hall?
Well, it looks very, very different. People who have come through the hall so far have been surprised at the changes, and I’m very happy about that. Some of the musicians who came in during construction said ‘Wow, it really feels intimate’—and that was without hearing about the concept. That was very satisfying to me. One of our biggest objectives was for the hall not to feel like the large volume it actually is. It feels softer and nicer. I think it’s going to work really well.

The new lobby almost seems to be the opposite of the hall. Rather than intimate, it appears to be about public performance.
Exactly. We were really taken by the very tiny entrance to Tully, and we thought, well, why shouldn’t Tully be as exhibitionistic as the Met and some of the other halls at Lincoln Center? They’re really about making public space truly public.

You’ve even described it as an “architectural striptease.”?
The building was so internally focused. It was just stone everywhere on
the lower course when you walked around it. So, yes, the idea was to do that striptease and expose what’s there. There’s a lot of activity behind those walls. Where Broadway and 65th Street intersect, there’s an acute triangle. Juilliard will mark that point, and just below it is an info peel (high-definition video wall) and grandstand. It puts the public space in a more open space. We essentially have an inner lobby as well as an outer lobby that spills out onto the plaza. People can move through it during the day or pour out there during intermissions. We wanted to make the glass wall in between as thin as humanly possible. It’s almost not there, but of course it’s there.

Why was that sense of transparency important?
In principle, it was about democratizing Lincoln Center. I used to go to Lincoln Center performances a lot when I was younger, and I worked in the Library for the Performing Arts. But it always felt a little bit detached from the city. What we wanted to do, now coming back as architects and as New Yorkers, we wanted to make Lincoln Center more accessible, visually and physically. We wanted to really make good on the public spaces, and to have them become destinations. The social context that Lincoln Center operates in has changed dramatically, and it was time to rethink things. Transparency is very much part of a gesture of accessibility and openness—art spills out to the street, and the city spills back into Lincoln Center. That interface is no longer so hard-edged.

How does it feel to see the design realized?
It’s been a very interesting ride. It’s been a complicated project, but also a very satisfying one. In a way, we’re doing it for ourselves. We’re going to be patrons and we’ll be going to see the concerts. But it’s a challenge working in such an iconic spot. There was a big responsibility on our shoulders to get it right.

Tim McKeough is a New York based journalist who writes about architecture and design for publications such as The New York Times, Fast Company, Wired, and Metropolis.