Today Architectural Digest travels to Lower Manhattan to tour the newly completed Perelman Performing Arts Center. An integral part of the new World Trade Center site, architects Joshua Ramus and David Rockwell were eager to give the arts a new home in the area. Ramus calls the building a “mystery box” as the theater’s 3 auditoria ingeniously extend and combine to create over 62 stage-audience configurations, resulting in a different space each time you visit. But what makes this building so special is revealed at dusk when the chandeliers shine through its 5,000 marble tile exterior, causing it to glow. As this unique space finally opens its doors, the ultimate hope for Perelman is to inspire artists to create profound work–in turn inspiring the public.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:08 The Pearlman Performing Arts Center
00:10 is a new performing arts center that sits just
00:14 adjacent to the 9/11 Memorial.
00:17 It's wrapped in a marble from Portugal.
00:21 During the day, it does project a kind of sobriety,
00:24 but then in the evenings, it dematerializes and glows
00:27 and has this incredible orange glow, amber glow,
00:30 that asserts itself within the context.
00:32 At the core of the building is a really exciting, novel
00:43 configuration of auditoria that can extend and combine
00:47 to create 10 possible different proportions and over 62
00:50 different stage audience configurations.
00:52 The wrapper basically turns the building into a mystery box.
00:56 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:03 My name is Joshua Ramos.
01:04 I'm the founding principal of REX.
01:06 We're the design architect for the Pearlman Performing Arts
01:09 Center at the World Trade Center.
01:10 The stone is what we call biaxially bookmatched,
01:13 meaning it's the same around a horizontal axis,
01:16 and it's also the same around a vertical axis.
01:22 There are just under 5,000 tiles.
01:26 The stone is half an inch, 12 millimeters thick,
01:30 and it's actually laminated between two pieces of glass.
01:34 The stone has iron in it.
01:37 That's actually what creates that kind of amber glow.
01:41 So the facade is illuminated by a series of chandeliers
01:44 that run around this perimeter.
01:46 So the chandeliers are designed as chevrons,
01:49 and they have linear elements on them.
01:51 And the top and the bottom one are the brightest,
01:53 and they shine up and shine down to the farthest distance.
01:57 And as the linear elements get closer and closer and closer
02:00 to horizontal, they get slightly dimmer and dimmer and dimmer
02:03 and dimmer, with the effect that the building has
02:06 a relatively uniform illumination at night.
02:09 It's our belief that every time someone comes to the building,
02:12 they are likely to see something they didn't expect.
02:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:19 While this is the least likely configuration
02:21 you'll ever see it in, in some ways,
02:24 it's the best configuration to get
02:25 a sense of the lay of the land.
02:27 Nominally, we have three auditoria.
02:29 There is the Zuccotti that's 450 seats,
02:32 the Nichols that's 250 seats, and the Duke that is 99 seats.
02:36 That is what we call the Zuccotti.
02:39 This zone right here is one of the scene docks.
02:43 That is the Nichols.
02:45 The space over here between them is the next scene dock,
02:48 and then the small one is the Duke.
02:51 The floor that I'm standing on can be flat, as you see,
02:54 but it can take all different kinds of geometries,
02:56 including a rake that goes all the way up to the first balcony.
03:00 So there would be scenarios in which everything
03:02 that I'm standing in right now is all seating.
03:04 In that case, you would be looking at the Nichols
03:07 as really a deep end stage.
03:09 So that's the first thing.
03:10 There is four massive acoustic guillotine walls.
03:13 One there and one there.
03:15 Those are each 46 tons each,
03:17 and then there's a third and a fourth there.
03:19 In addition, this element and this element,
03:22 that element and that element are movable balconies.
03:25 Right now, you're seeing the horseshoe
03:27 in the widest configuration.
03:28 They could be brought in to make a tight theater in the round,
03:33 like a Shakespearean theater in the round.
03:35 Directly beneath this space is what we call the trap.
03:39 This is one of the most, I think, spectacular spaces
03:41 in the building, which no one will ever see.
03:44 A trap is an underfloor area that allows you
03:47 to build different geometries of a stage.
03:51 What's more unique about this than most
03:53 is that it is automated.
03:55 So the purpose of this is to allow the floor of the Zuccotti
03:59 to be able to either take different stage configurations
04:01 or different seating configurations.
04:03 And all of that happens using these things
04:05 that we call gallow lifts.
04:06 These are lift mechanisms.
04:08 And so the purpose of these is to allow the floors
04:11 to move up to two floors in height, vertically,
04:15 without taking up any space beneath it.
04:17 So these cylinders grow out of this drum, like magic.
04:22 I think how a lot of people like to think about,
04:24 you know, a good building,
04:25 it will reveal itself to you over time.
04:27 We actually hope that the building
04:28 will never reveal itself to you.
04:30 That the more you use it, the more mystified you will be,
04:33 the more magical the experience will be,
04:35 the more you'll be able to see it.
04:37 The more magical the experience will be,
04:39 the more you will stand outside,
04:40 stare up at this glowing amber cube,
04:43 and wonder how on earth are all those different things
04:46 happening in this one relatively small building.
04:48 (gentle music)
04:51 We are two weeks out from opening.
04:56 - We're only a couple weeks from opening.
04:58 Every day that I come down here,
05:00 it's looking better and better.
05:02 I'm David Rockwell.
05:03 I designed the lobby of the Pearlman.
05:07 - The Memorial was a kind of sacred space,
05:09 and this building would not be a distraction to that,
05:13 but would have a kind of quiet dignity about it.
05:16 And that life inside the building
05:18 would reveal itself when you got in.
05:20 We're on the staircase that leads you into the pack,
05:23 and it's a very dramatic way to enter.
05:26 And it starts with a ceiling,
05:27 which is the first thing you see.
05:29 You're coming up a steep set of stairs,
05:31 and you see the ceiling and these wood ribs
05:34 with integrated lighting
05:36 that move in the same axis as the building.
05:39 So the ceiling also provides a function wayfinding
05:43 that when a show starts,
05:44 the rest of the lights can dim
05:46 at a little pre-show ritual,
05:48 and the ribs that go east-west can get brighter,
05:51 and you'll just kind of follow the light.
05:53 So in terms of thinking of this as a piece of theater,
05:58 and I always look at the overlap
06:00 between architecture and theater,
06:02 once we established this field of ribs going north-south,
06:06 we designed them in a way that they move around
06:09 a cross-bracing of the building.
06:10 So circulation is something that happens
06:13 in these wider expanses,
06:14 but also as you get into the restaurant,
06:16 circulation allows you to move through
06:19 and see these pockets of seating.
06:20 You know, there's been so much written about New York
06:29 being a great place for public theater
06:31 and people watching.
06:32 I think this table and this bench
06:35 is a great place to have a drink and wait for your seat
06:38 and kind of look at the swirl of action happening around it.
06:41 Restaurant seats, hotel seats,
06:43 tend to be defined by how long you want someone
06:45 to sit in this seat.
06:46 This is like a 15-minute perch.
06:48 Also, generally, I find people want to sit
06:51 with their back against a wall or a banquette.
06:54 So if you look at the way the room's laid out,
06:56 there are some smaller areas
06:59 that feel like a dining room within a dining room.
07:01 There are areas that are very much in the public flow.
07:04 I think the strongest analogy
07:09 between a restaurant and a meal and a theater piece
07:12 is they live primarily in your memory.
07:15 All of the work that goes into that experience
07:17 lives in some collective memory
07:19 you have about the experience.
07:20 I want people, when they leave this restaurant,
07:22 to feel welcomed.
07:23 I want them to feel energized.
07:25 I'd like them to feel like they were
07:27 at this very special place for a special meal
07:30 that happens either before or after the show, they say.
07:32 I always found the most interesting part
07:35 of any place that I live is performance areas.
07:39 And I think this is a piece of New York
07:41 that will be very welcome.
07:42 - Dating back to the original master plan,
07:52 there was always a performing arts center on this site.
07:54 This would be the place in which
07:56 the restorative power of art would be the counterpoint
08:00 to the incredible commemoration
08:02 that was happening directly adjacent.
08:04 I lived a couple blocks away, north,
08:06 on Greenwich Street during the attacks.
08:08 So for me personally, working here came with a lot of,
08:13 we have to do something that we're exceptionally proud of.
08:17 We have to do something that we gave
08:19 the full measure of our abilities.
08:22 (soft music)
08:24 - I've lived in Lower Manhattan for more than three decades
08:30 and was very much a New Yorker during 9/11
08:33 and was part of a number of rebuilding initiatives.
08:37 So when we were invited to participate in this,
08:41 it was an immediate yes,
08:43 because it is in some ways the final building block
08:46 and keeps the promise of arts
08:49 being a part of this neighborhood.
08:50 That's a really wonderful, beautiful thing to participate in.
08:55 Now we'll see that come to life.
08:57 What would we hope for this building?
09:03 Certainly we hope people to think it's beautiful,
09:05 but way beyond that, way beyond that.
09:07 We hope that it inspires incredibly talented people
09:11 to do profound work
09:13 and that that profound work inspires the public.
09:17 - I think globally it will be a place
09:18 that people will come to.
09:20 And when they come here,
09:21 they'll find a place to hang out,
09:23 place to have a conversation about theater,
09:25 a community of people who are interested
09:27 in the storytelling outside of just the theaters.
09:30 And I think that sense of coming together as an audience
09:34 will be something that really differentiates the pack
09:36 from any other facility in New York.
09:38 - You know, New York has reinvented itself
09:40 over and over and over and over again.
09:42 It's been this incredible laboratory
09:45 for architecture and urbanism for hundreds of years.
09:49 And certainly the ambition and scale of this master plan
09:52 and what was done here participates in that.
09:56 I hope that we've created a building
09:58 that can live up to the expectations of New York.
10:01 (gentle music)
10:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]