Design for Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at WTC site unveiled

by Brianna Crandall — September 21, 2016 — The board of directors of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center and President and Director Maggie Boepple recently unveiled the design for the new center, located at the renewed World Trade Center (WTC) site.  Set to open in 2020, The Perelman Center will produce and premiere theater, dance, music, film, opera, and multidisciplinary works while offering a range of amenities for visitors and residents in the Lower Manhattan community. Brooklyn native Barbra Streisand was also announced as the organization’s newly elected chairperson.

Designed by New York-based REX with theater consultants Charcoalblue, the concept for The Perelman Center is inspired by the Center’s mission to “defy experiential expectations.” Its design cues were taken from The Perelman Center’s aim to foster artistic risk, incubate original productions, provide unparalleled flexibility, and deliver the most technologically advanced and digitally connected spaces for creative performance.

Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center

The flexible, connected performing arts center will produce and premiere theater, dance, music, film, opera and multidisciplinary works while offering a range of amenities.

Considered the final piece of the renewed World Trade Center master plan as conceived by Daniel Libeskind, the performing arts center is the result of the continued efforts of key officials on the local, state, and federal levels.  According to the developers, Silverstein Properties, the master plan has “successfully balanced the site’s commemorative function with the need to recreate a vibrant neighborhood reflecting the energy and humanity of New York City,” as reflected in the new center.

Design description

Amidst gleaming glass towers on the north side of the 9/11 Memorial, The Perelman Center is a pure form, rotated to accommodate complex below-grade constraints, address the 9/11 Museum and transportation hub, and engage the site’s main pedestrian streets of Greenwich and Fulton. The building is wrapped in translucent, veined marble — from the same Vermont quarry as the U.S. Supreme Court building and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial — laminated within insulated glass.

By day, the volume is an elegant, book-matched stone edifice, whose simplicity and traditional material acknowledge the solemnity of its context. Daylight illuminates the interior through the marble façade. By night, this monolith dematerializes: silhouettes of human movement and theatrical configurations animate the glowing enclosure, hinting at the creative energy inside.

The approximately 90,000 square-foot building boasts a pioneering, highly adaptable performance palette that combines both multi-form and multi-processional flexibility. It holds three auditoria (for 499, 250, and 99 persons) and a rehearsal room that can double as a fourth venue. The auditoria can combine to form seven additional unique performance spaces for a total of eleven arrangements, including the rehearsal room venue, which can all adopt manifold stage-audience configurations.

While the building’s elegant exterior befits the site, its muscular, utilitarian interior expresses the workhorse quality necessary for the changing nature of The Perelman Center’s artistic needs, through ruggedly beautiful materials that encourage the frequent transformation of scenery and stage-audience configurations. The last cost estimate for The Perelman Center for this 90,000 square-foot building came in at $243 million.

Through its innovative technology features, The Perelman Center will reportedly be the most connected theater in New York, and will serve as an important cultural center for the renewed Lower Manhattan community and beyond to enjoy, day and night.