Jenny Belzberg Theatre, Banff Centre for Preforming Arts

Project Details

Project Description

This project responds to the recommendations of a larger master plan vision to forge a more connected, sustainable campus for the Banff Centre that inspires new levels of artistic activities and productions.
The project is planned in two phases: the immediate upgrades to the Eric Harvey Theatre and the larger expansion into a new Performing Arts and Learning Centre. Phase One is underway and scheduled for completion in Winter 2020.

As a place in Canada where creative boldness is expected and which is described as the ‘freedom to be fearless’, the new expanded Centre will provide a flexible, supportive platform from which artists will be inspired to create innovative, courageous artistic practices and performances ‘made in Banff’.

The Banff Centre is renowned for providing an environment that supports all stages of the creation cycle – from incubation to presentation. The project design will physically bring facilities and users together, resulting in new, integrated spaces with back-of-house “maker spaces” that support performance and theatre and front-of-house spaces for performances and public gatherings. While the theatre performance spaces remain at the heart, they are also reimagined as interactive educational spaces to support traditional, new and experimental art forms and audience experiences.

The existing Eric Harvie Theatre (EHT) is reimagined within the overall site footprint to create a more intimate performance environment appropriate to the range of contemporary and commercial performance/speaker/film events taking place at The Banff Centre.

Sustainably reusing the existing fly tower, the room will be redesigned to accommodate the highest level of theatrical performance and balance the needs of audience comfort and experience. The newly refurbished theatre will be a highly sophisticated room, combining the best of theatre design from around the world with a response to the local context.

Conceptually the space is simple, an encircling profile − enhanced by balconies − wraps the audience, reaching towards and embracing the stage. The audience is physically connected to the proscenium, enhancing the sense of inclusion and participation, and encouraging the playing space to move forward into the auditorium.