Site
An existing chamber music hall at the Pietro Belluschi–designed Juilliard School of Music, on the corner of 65th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. The hall is part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Program
A complete renovation of the 1,100-seat music hall, with an expansion of lobbies and public spaces.
Solution
With the goal of elevating Alice Tully Hall to the level of Lincoln Center's premier performance venues, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and FXFowle Architects replaced the original opaque walls on the ground level with a cable-net glass façade, exposing the lobby to passersby. A new cantilevered grandstand outside the building faces the lobby, putting the patrons in the role of performers. Under the cantilever, touchscreens give information about events at Lincoln Center.
Inside the hall itself, curving wall surfaces and a partial box-in-box construction combine to block out reverberation from the subway, creating acoustic intimacy. The interior walls of the auditorium consist of a micro-thin wood veneer adhered to 3form resin panels and outfitted with an LED lighting system with individually addressable fixtures. The result is a shadowless, tunable, glowing wall of wood.
The jury particularly appreciated that the design team rethought an existing building and its environs, proving the needlessness of tearing the place down and starting fresh. "This is a reuse of a building and a transformation of an urban space," said Jeanne Gang. "This is a project that invested effort in making something much more functional and usable and more exciting than it was before."
Project Credits
Project: Alice Tully Hall, New York
Client: Lincoln Center Development Project
Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York—Liz Diller, Charles Renfro (principals in charge); Ben Gilmartin, Anthony Saby, Robert Condon, Gerard Sullivan (project leaders); Kevin Rice, Rainer Hehl, Frank Gesualdi, Filip Tejchman, Gaspar Libedinski, Shawn Mackinnon, Chiara Baccarini, Stefan Gruber, Michael Hundsnurscher, Krists Karklins, Mateo Antonio de Cardenas, Ben Mickus, Josh Uhl, Eric Höweler, Felipe Ferrer, Sebastian Guivernau (project team)
FXFowle Architects, New York—Sylvia Smith (principal in charge); Heidi Blau (project director); Peter Pesce, Ronald Gabel, Mark Nusbaum, Heng Choong Leong, Douglas Muir (project architects); Zen Chen, Lisa Cheung, Aaron Dai, David Glick, Theresa Genovese, Adam Griff, Surawat Hant, Rod Hammer, Ben Ives, Paul Kim, Brenda May, Steve Melke, Colin Montoute, Craig Morton, Pedro Pachano, Raphael Pereira, Dan Piselli, Krishna Rao, Anthony Saby, Michael Sanchez, Monika Sarac, Catherine Selby, Tim Sudweeks, Michael Syracuse, Eric Van Der Sluys, Conrad Talley, Andrew Varela, Raquel Vasallo, Jeff Yu, Lauren Zailyk (project team)
Construction Manager: Turner Construction Co.
Structural/M/E/P: Arup
Lighting: L'Observatoire International
Acoustics/Electroacoustics: Jaffe Holden Acoustics
Theater: Fisher Dachs Associates
Theater Woodwork: Fetzer Architectural Woodwork
Curtain Wall: R.A. Heintges & Associates
LED Lighting: Encore/Color Kinetics
Data/Telecom: Shen Milsom Wilke
Building Information Modeling: Gehry Technologies
Graphics: 2x4
