Inside a Glowing NYC Theater With Shape-Shifting Rooms

[gentle music]

The Perelman Performing Arts Center

is a new performing arts center that sits just adjacent

to the 9/11 memorial.

It's wrapped in a marble from Portugal.

During the day, it does project a kind of sobriety

but then in the evenings, it dematerializes

and glows and has this incredible orange glow,

amber glow that asserts itself within the context.

[gentle music]

At the core of the building is a really exciting

novel configuration of auditoria that can extend

and combine to create 10 possible different proportions

and over 62 different stage audience configurations.

The wrapper basically turns the building into a mystery box.

[gentle music]

My name is Joshua Ramus.

I'm the founding principle of REX.

We're the design architect

for the Perelman Performing Arts Center

at the World Trade Center.

The stone is what we call biaxially bookmatched

meaning it's the same around a horizontal axis,

and it's also the same around a vertical axis.

[gentle music]

There are just under 5,000 tiles.

The stone is half an inch, 12 millimeters thick,

and it's actually laminated between two pieces of glass.

The stone has iron in it.

That's actually what creates that kind of amber glow.

So the facade is illuminated

by a series of chandeliers that run around this perimeter.

So the chandeliers are designed as chevrons,

and they have linear elements on them,

and the top and the bottom one are the brightest

and they shine up and shine down to the farthest distance.

And as the linear elements get closer and closer

and closer to horizontal, they get slightly dimmer

and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer with the effect that

the building has a relatively uniform illumination at night.

It's our belief

that every time someone comes to the building,

they are likely to see something they didn't expect.

[gentle music]

While this is the least likely configuration you'll ever

see it in, in some ways it's the best configuration

to get a sense of the lay of the land.

Nominally, we have three auditoria.

There is the Zuccotti that's 450 seats.

The Nichols, that's 250 seats,

and the Duke that is 99 seats.

That is what we call the Zuccotti.

This zone right here is one of the scene docks,

that is the Nichols.

The space over here between them is the next scene dock,

and then the small one is the Duke.

The floor that I'm standing on can be flat as you see,

but it can take all different kinds of geometries

including a rake that goes all the way up

to the first balcony.

So there would be scenarios in which everything

that I'm standing in right now is all seating.

And in that case, you would be looking at the Nichols

as really a deep end stage.

So that's the first thing.

There is four massive acoustic guillotine walls,

one there and one there.

Those are each 46 tons each,

and then there's a third and a fourth there.

In addition, this element and this element,

that element and that element are movable balconies.

Right now you're seeing the horseshoe

in the widest configuration.

They could be brought in

to make a tight theater in the round,

like a Shakespearian theater in the round.

Directly beneath this space is what we call the trap.

This is one of the most, I think, spectacular spaces

in the building, which no one will ever see.

A trap is an underfloor area that allows you

to build different geometries of a stage.

What's more unique about this than most

is that it is automated.

So the purpose of this is to allow the floor

of the Zuccotti to be able to

either take different stage configurations

or different seating configurations.

And all of that happens using these things

that we call gala lifts.

These are lift mechanisms, and so the purpose of these

is to allow the floors to move up to two floors

in height vertically without taking up any space beneath it.

So these cylinders grow out of this drum like magic.

I think how a lot of people like to think about,

a good building, it will reveal itself to you over time.

We actually hope

that the building will never reveal itself to you.

That the more you use it, the more mystified you will be.

The more magical the experience will be,

the more you will stand outside,

stare up at this glowing amber cube and wonder

how on Earth are all those different things

happening in this one relatively small building.

[gentle music]

We are two weeks out from opening.

We're only a couple weeks from opening.

Every day that I come down here

it's looking better and better.

I'm David Rockwell.

I designed the lobby at the Perelman.

The memorial is a kind of sacred space,

and this building would not be a distraction to that,

but would have a kind of quiet dignity about it.

And that life inside the building

would reveal itself when you got in.

We're on the staircase that leads you into the PAC,

and it's a very dramatic way to enter.

And it starts with a ceiling

which is the first thing you see.

You're coming up a steep set of stairs

and you see the ceiling and these wood ribs

with integrated lighting that move in the same axis

as the building.

So the ceiling also provides a function of way finding,

that when a show starts, the rest

of the lights can dim at a little pre-show ritual,

and the ribs that go east west can get brighter,

and you'll just kind of follow the light.

So in terms of thinking of this as a piece of theater,

and I always look at the overlap

between architecture and theater.

Once we established this field of ribs going north south,

we designed them in a way that they move around

a cross bracing at the building.

So circulation is something that happens

in these wider expanses, but also as you get

into the restaurant, circulation allows you to move through

and see these pockets of seating.

[gentle music]

There's been so much written

about New York being a great place

for public theater and people watching.

I think this table and this bench

is a great place to have a drink

and wait for your seat and kind of look

at the swirl of action happening around it.

Restaurant seats, hotel seats tend to be defined

by how long you want someone to sit in this seat.

This is like a 15 minute perch.

Also, generally, I find people wanna sit

with their back against a wall or a banquette.

So if you look at the way the room's laid out,

there are some smaller areas

that feel like a dining room within a dining room,

and there are areas that are very much in the public flow.

[gentle music]

I think the strongest analogy

between a restaurant and a meal and a theater piece

is they live primarily in your memory.

All of the work that goes into that experience lives

in some collective memory you have about the experience.

I want people

when they leave this restaurant to feel welcomed.

I want them to feel energized.

I'd like them to feel like they were

at this very special place for a special meal

that happens either before or after the show they see.

I always found the most interesting part

of any place that I live is performance areas.

And I think this is a piece

of New York that will be very welcome.

[gentle music]

Dating back to the original master plan

there was always a performing arts center on this site.

This would be the place in which the restorative power

of art would be the counterpoint to the incredible

commemoration that was happening directly adjacent.

I lived a couple blocks away,

north on Greenwich Street during the attacks.

So for me personally, working here came with a lot of

we have to do something that we are exceptionally proud of.

We have to do something

that we gave the full measure of our abilities.

[gentle music]

I've lived in lower Manhattan for more than three decades

and was very much a New Yorker during 9/11

and was part of a number of rebuilding initiatives.

So when we were invited to participate in this,

it was an immediate yes because it is

in some ways the final building block and keeps the promise

of arts being a part of this neighborhood.

That's a really wonderful,

beautiful thing to participate in.

Now we'll see that come to life.

[gentle music]

What would we hope for this building?

Certainly we hope people to think it's beautiful.

But way beyond that, way beyond that,

we hope that it inspires incredibly talented people

to do profound work,

and that that profound work inspires the public.

I think globally will be a place that people will come to.

And when they come here, they'll find a place to hang out,

a place to have a conversation about theater,

a community of people who are interested

in the storytelling outside of just the theaters.

And I think that sense of coming together

as an audience will be something that really

differentiates the PAC from any other facility in New York.

New York has reinvented itself

over and over and over and over again.

It's been this incredible laboratory

for architecture and urbanism for hundreds of years.

And certainly the ambition and scale of this master plan

and what was done here participates in that.

I hope that we've created a building

that can live up to the expectations of New York.

[gentle music]