The Architect
Design Intentions
Architectural Fact Sheet
Architect's Drawings
Floor Plans
Planning Committee
- Four Major Venues: Strong Connections between Audience and Performer.
- An Educational Proposition: Break Down the Traditional Separation of Front-of-House and Back-of-House Activity.
- Performing Arts on A Liberal Arts Campus: An Emphasis on Connections.
- A Performing Arts Building: Fitting A Big Building onto a Liberal Arts Campus.
- Architectural Design Ideas
Each of the four major venues has a very different purpose and character, but in all cases, immediacy and intimacy are paramount:
A. MainStage Theatre: the encircling geometry of this 550-seat theater, marked by a warm wood interior, maximizes intimacy by allowing audience members to be aware of each other's presence as they watch a performance.
B. The CenterStage Theatre is the "work-horse" of the Theatre Department. Designed as a 150-seat "Studio Theater," a flexible space with a "point-of-view," (avoiding the pedagogic drawbacks of a totally neutral space); it has an industrial character and includes moveable balconies, a flexible lift, and a giant steel sliding door that opens directly onto the CenterStage lobby.
C. The Dance Rehearsal Studio (50'x 65') with three walls of glass has dramatic views to the Berkshire Hills and will serve as a special performance space for small dance productions and music recitals.
D. The existing Adams Memorial Theatre has been converted to an intimate 220-seat "thrust" type theater (a literal theater within a theater). Our firm worked closely with Theatre Project Consultants and Acoustic Dimensions on the design of each venue.
By organizing the building and its circulation pattern to enable students and the public to pass by and engage back-of-house activities (rehearsal spaces, break-out spaces, costume shops, faculty offices), the building celebrates the educational importance of these functions to the art and craft of theatre and dance.
Located in a prominent position on Main Street, the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance emphasizes the importance of connections between theatre/dance and other disciplines on a liberal arts campus. By providing a direct cross path through the building (connecting the Greylock Dormitories with the Main Campus), the building enables non-theatre/dance students to be exposed to the excitement and the inner workings of two departments they might not otherwise know. Most dramatically, a giant 20' high steel door opens to reveal the inner workings of the CenterStage Theatre along this path.
The building, perpendicular to Main Street and presenting a narrow face to the street, maintains the established pattern of adjacent Williams College buildings along the north side of the street. At this narrow front lobby, large sliding doors open and extend the lobby space onto the Main Street lawn in the summer. Three other entrances to the building further integrate it into the fabric of a broader campus life.
- The MainStage Lobby, a glass cube with strong overhanging roof and dense wood shutters, brings a strength of form, warmth of materials, and warmth of natural light to the face of the building on Main Street. If offers an architectural counterpoint to the semi-circular stone walls and the 80' tall fly tower of the MainStage.
- The publicly accessible passageway from front-of-house to back-of-house is marked by a strong change in character and materials. Beginning with the glass and warm wood of the front lobby, the passage evolves into the glass, metal and steel industrial aesthetic of the CenterStage and its lobby. That aesthetic is continued in the monumental stair that moves one up to the major dance space and in the gradual ramp that moves one down to the rear entrance.
- The interior for the building is everywhere infused with daylight, either through large glass walls modulated by wood shutters in the front Lobby or by skylights creating ever changing patterns of light along circulation routes. Extraordinary views of the campus and surrounding Berkshire Hills are found throughout, particularly from the Lobby and the large Dance Studio.