Fayetteville Outdoor Theater

An outdoor theater designed and built by students blends high-tech fabrication with a venerable technique of assemblage.

The Fayetteville Outdoor Theater is the brainchild of a studio at the University of Arkansas (UA) Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Twelve students were led by visiting professor William Massie—on his way from his tenure as head of the architecture department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art to a new role as director of design technology at the University of Kentucky College of Design—and Angela Carpenter, his former student and now the fabrication labs manager at UA.

As a leader in the DigiFab movement and a connoisseur of laser-cut tube steel, Massie says that he “challenged the students to build something with technology that has never been built and has a cultural agenda.” A Google search led to Central Tube and Bar, just two hours from campus in Conway, Ark., which serendipitously houses one of the few state-of-the art, $4 million tube-cutting machines in North America. Paired with a rigorous study of early Japanese joinery—both for its subtractive complexity and its beauty—this machine allowed students to laser-cut tube steel the way that 16th-century Japanese carpenters joined wood.

“This is the first time the technology to cut steel tube was both cheap enough for us to use and had the precision to change the whole model of how we join things together,” Massie says. “Out of all the digital fabrication technologies that exist, this might be the workhorse. I think laser-cut tube will be the technology that will be utilized more than any other in the future.” The students spent weeks developing joints, then started thinking about what they could build. When class discussions drifted to the way millennials watch movies on phones, the students decided that their design/build project would be a communal theater with an extended screen that mimics the selfie stick—a subtle critique of the antisocial aspects of social media, and an open invitation to participate in public life.

“We had a lot of conversations about what happens in the margins at theaters—like the possibility that going into a space that is safe because it’s communal decreases inhibition,” Massie says. “If we’re not including awareness of social conditions in our discussions, students don’t hunger for that later when they’re making buildings that can impact the world.” The resulting 45- by 20-foot structure only uses two types of joints (a birdsmouth joint at the corners and a mortise scarf joint for areas where the steel needed to extend) and two sizes of 16-gauge tube steel (2 inches square and 1.25 inches square). The only other materials are the projection screen, its counterweight, and thrift-store couches.

With Massie headed to Kentucky, Carpenter plans to continue researching the joint techniques and to experiment with a skin and using a cheaper, plasma laser cutter so UA students can continue the exploration.

Project Credits
Project: Fayetteville Outdoor Theater, Fayetteville, Ark.
Client: University of Arkansas
Designer: University of Arkansas, Fay Jones School of Architecture, Fayetteville . William Massie, Angela Carpenter (professors); Austin Autrey, Christian Campbell, Nathan Clark, John Collamore, Molly Evans, Chelsea Garrison, Alexandria Glass, Derek Hukill, Evan Hursley, Scott Kervin, Rafael Segura, Christine Wass (student project team)
Fabricator: Central Tube and Bar
Size: 1,000 square feet
Cost: $2,000 (materials)