Entries Tagged 'pre-fabricated Buildings' ↓

The funniest thing you could say about a building dedicated to dead European composers is that it could only make sense now, in the age of American hip-hop. but the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, gleaming and screaming on a small hill in a midsize city, represents a big leap into the present for both the fine arts and architecture.

Kansas City’s newest showpiece creates a framework for how dusty old orchestras can survive in a distracted world. The center takes all the micro things needed to put on a good show, like honed acoustics, advanced stage mechanics, comfy seats, and remixes them with today’s macro realities — that arts groups need to work together, look as relevant as the newest Apple Store miracle.

When the hall offered a public preview last month, 50,000 people lined up. all those folks won’t buy tickets for the symphony, or for the city’s opera and ballet companies, which share this complex, but they are touched by what architect Moshe Safdie has given this aging metropolis fighting back hard from decades of decline: irrefutable evidence that Kansas City is a cultured place.

Overshadowing the achievement of the two very fine performance halls inside is the feature everyone is talking about, the building’s exterior north wall; two sets of stainless steel bands that curve upward, outward and then inward, starting at the ground and ending in peaks nine stories high. From a distance, the walls resemble waves, or two identical conch shells set side-by-side.

But this is nature’s symmetry switched up by an architect’s purposeful hand. The bands, separated by concrete panels, have a syncopated rhythm that varies in depth, width and height. If there is a pattern, it is improvised, responding purely to the function of the two very different theaters inside.

A century ago, we might have said the placement of these repeated and reinterpreted lines echoed classical music itself — variations on a theme, if you will. Fifty years ago, we might have compared them to jazz — a phrase turned upside down and inside out.

But the Kauffman Center is too ornery for the orderly world of Bach or Handel, too much of a solo act to trade riffs with Monk or Miles. What you hear at as you pass by 16th and Broadway streets is a contemporary, urban beat, a pummeling, pumped- up, tripped-out mix.

Safide has tapped his inner DJ. his building is brash, its theme is itself. The place calls out its own name again and again, the way Jay-Z does.

Is it appropriate for a concert hall to have a rapper-sized ego? maybe not, though it seems inevitable for the Kauffman Center. A $413 million investment in glass and steel is going to stand out in a city of concrete and bricks. and while its placement, on a hill at the edge of he urban core, allows for killer views from the massive lobby, the siting means it will always stand apart from its surroundings, on the elite side of the cultural rift.

Still, confidence, even cockiness, is a winning trait these days, and that makes this building a landmark product of its time.

Three spaces, one roof

The Kauffman Center’s interior star is Helzberg Hall, the 1,600-seat hub of the Kansas City Symphony. Aside from its blue velvety seat covers, the oval hall is nearly all wood, Douglas fir panels on the walls and floors, sonic-friendly Alaskan cedar on the stage. Mimicking the building’s trademark exterior, panels of stainless steel mesh curve up the back wall and morph into the ceiling.

The space feels a bit sacred, cathedral-like, though it is warmed considerably by the forward-thinking placement of its stage. instead of being at the front of the hall, it protrudes out into about a third of the space. Concerts are not exactly “in the round,” but a considerable 40 percent of the seats are either on the side or behind the stage.

Audience members aren’t forced to stare at the conductor’s back. they can see the fingers of violinists, the pursed lips of bassoonists, and they can see each other’s faces, transforming the sit-and-listen symphony experience into something broader — an old-school form of multimedia.

The other performance space, the 1,800-seat Muriel Kauffman Theatre, where the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and the Kansas City Ballet will perform, follows the traditional European opera house shape. It is a more formal affair with a defined proscenium stage. The most notable characteristics here are the cantilevered balconies fronted in crinkled mylar and glimmering gold LEDs and set behind beveled resin. The farthest chair is just 100 feet from the stage.

And the stage is remarkable: 5,000 square feet with fly space rising 74 feet. It can support a backdrop as heavy as 2,000 pounds and as tall as 30 feet.

Neither theater overshadows Brandmeyer great Hall, the facility’s 15,000-square-foot grand entrance and lobby. The exterior wall and the roof are made of a frameless and nearly seamless grid of glass panels held up by an army of 27 hard-working cables and rods that stretch along the interior ceiling right through to the outside, where they are anchored into the ground.

The interior details are ethereal, pale floors coated in Portuguese limestone, curved balconies and stairwells that hang over the room, bringing to mind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Ambition and art, unbridled

Great buildings don’t come cheap or easy. The people in Kansas City know that. just four years ago, they pulled together to fund the $200 million Bloch Building, architect Steven Holl’s brilliant addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. (Brilliant as in smart, but it also lights up at night).

The Kauffman Center took 15 years to conceive, plan, fund and build. Its main proponent, Julia Irene Kauffman — the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation, named for her late mother, seeded the project with a $105 million gift in 2000 — saw the dream through plenty of doubt and the economic fallout that followed Sept. 11, 2001.

Gifts from corporations, foundations and individuals have brought the fundraising total to $380 million. The city has helped, as well, by building a $47 million parking garage on the premises.

There’s a huge bet on the table that this formidable piece of architecture can spark broader downtown redevelopment and bolster the city’s national reputation.

But arts fans are likely to see a return on their investment no matter how things play out. Sophisticated art houses bring out the best in artists; they inspire directors and production designers to try all kinds of things, and not necessarily on the experimental side.

Last weekend, the Kansas City Ballet premiered its three-act “Tom Sawyer,” based on the mark Twain classic. Such a safe, inspirational choice could easily have come off as too traditional, so Midwestern.

But the Kauffman Center gave it cover. Audiences impressed by the building opened their souls to the show. in return, they got a show to remember, a production fueled by not just great dance but by a great setting. Choreographer William Whitener let those Missouri troublemakers dance cute at first, then pushed them toward the edge for Twain’s dark, murderous climax.

It was a long way from hip- hop, but it was no doubt fresh, a dance that could only have happened at this place, at this time. That’s what makes the performing arts competitive.

Check out all the Kauffman Center’s programming on the web at kauffmancenter.org.

Ray mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540 or rrinaldi@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter at @dparchitecture and on Facebook at Denver Post Architecture.

Sights and sounds, by the numbers

The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

16th and Broadway, Kansas City, Mo.

Size: 285,000 square feet

Architect: Moshe Safdie/Safdie Architects with offices in Boston, Jerusalem, Toronto and Singapore

Acoustics: Tokyo-based Nagata Acoustics

Total budget: $413 million, including $326 million for the building and $40 million for an endowment, both from private sources, plus a $47 million parking garage, built and owned by Kansas City.

Raised so far: $380 million, which includes donations from 2,100 individuals, corporations and foundations. A $105 million gift from the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation seeded the project.

The performing spaces

Helzberg Hall: The 1,600 seat home of the Kansas City Symphony houses a 5,548-pipe organ

Mauriel Kauffman Theatre: The 1,800-seat home for the Kansas City Ballet and Lyric Opera of Kansas City has a 5,000-square-foot stage and an orchestra pit large enough for 96 musicians.

Features

40,000 square feet of glass

10.8 million pounds of structural steel

Dressing-room space for 250 performers

Local schools are unnecessarily affected by lawsuit

I have followed the Netflix campus expansion project over the past few months. One of the benefits of the project is the new property tax generated that will go to our schools.

As a volunteer and parent of two children in the schools, I was very happy to see that this project would create a large pot of property taxes for our schools that previously wasn’t anticipated. In a time when the state of California continues to decrease funding for schools, local sources become even more critical. Los Gatos schools benefit because our primary source of school funding is local property taxes. having an increase in that local revenue stream without adding any additional students is a win/win for the schools.

Each year our class sizes are increasing and our schools are operating on a skeleton budget. I would implore Ms. Quintana and the Citizens for Responsible Development to think about how their lawsuit impacts every student in our schools. I am confident that they understand how important funding our schools is to the entire community and each and every homeowner in Los Gatos. In a time where our schools need every dollar to keep their existing programs moving forward, we cannot afford to wait years to receive increased property tax revenue.

Netflix lawsuit: ‘Are these people crazy?’

After watching the “Netflix Circus” regarding its proposed building, I am astounded at the antics of the elected officials and the latest lawsuit by a group of “concerned residents.” Are these people crazy?

Here is a substantial taxpayer, running an environmentally clean business, employing thousands, and these people want to drive them out of town? Have the objectors looked at the hundreds of empty buildings in Silicon Valley located in nearby towns and cities that would welcome Netflix with open arms?

If I were Netflix, I would leave Los Gatos as soon as possible and go elsewhere, where I did not have to deal with petty politics and “recreational lawsuits.” who needs this kind of nonsense?

Alliance holds its own meeting on the North 40

Recently, the Los Gatos Community Alliance hosted an informational meeting regarding the North 40. Since the town is not having this type of informal meeting, the alliance decided to do the job for them.

The town council, at its last meeting, decided to have another “structured” meeting to update the community as to the decisions made to date and the momentum of the developer’s North 40 application. perhaps they are licking wounds after the Dittos Lane fiasco and the Albright Way lawsuit. they claim they don’t want to give the impression that the North 40 project is their project and to keep everything transparent.

The Community Alliance meeting featured a presentation by Don Capobres, the lead man from Grosvenor (the North 40 developer). There were questions and answers throughout the presentation, unlike what happens at the town’s “structured” meetings. mr. Capobres was congenial and well versed in our General plan.

He claims to have been working side by side with our town staff for two years to coordinate his project with the new proposed General plan. I am sure he has had a lot of influence in the plan’s final outcome. I think this is called something derogatory to most people. He is adamant about what he wants at his project, and without making it sound like a threat, will pull out if he does not get what he wants.

He will consider, if the town wants, a senior housing element in lieu of family homes on the south side. He is more than willing to move our small downtown businesses into his project. He wants up to 15 percent small business within his retail mix and will not agree to having only large sizes of retail spaces to avoid departure of small business from Santa Cruz Avenue and Main.

Concerned about possibly of school overcrowding

I attended the school board meeting last week because I heard the district was contemplating 800 children on one elementary campus and I was terribly concerned. Why would our district even consider such a possibility?

Yet, that is just what they are considering. if Lexington undergoes construction, a district-stated option is to relocate Lexington students to Van Meter for a year. while Measure E items 4 and 5 state that funds will go toward increasing capacity at Lexington and Van Meter, I never dreamed that would mean 800 or more children on one campus or class sizes above 30. Does it mean that?

The current plan to build Lexington for only 196 children does not address capacity issues. Where will the district put the children moving into existing and new housing? will Van Meter never lose portable row and remain at 800 students? will Blossom Hill and Daves grow to 800 or more to accommodate the new students?

What other options exist at Lexington? what is the cost to remodel? what about portables to provide time for the district to work on merging with the mountain districts as the Santa Clara Grand Jury recommended? (Lakeside elementary is seven minutes from Lexington!) what about a less expensive design? a new site(s)? these options should be explored.

Given the current economic climate and increasing enrollment, what would be the best way to make the already approved $31 million provide maximum benefit for all the town children, keep class sizes small (a Measure E priority), not overburden some campuses and retain property values? I’d like to hear the district promise it will not increase class sizes and will cap enrollment at each school at current built capacity.

Overcrowded schools do not result in quality education and that hurts property values. We put in a lot of volunteer time, raise and give funds to the district. I’d like to hear the board articulate a true longterm plan so that parents don’t have to worry about overcrowded schools and our children can depend upon the educational quality in the district.

Ingrid Oakley-Girvan is a parent of students at Blossom Hill Elementary School and Fisher Middle School.