Alice Tully Hall - Architect

Architect

Alice Tully Hall was designed as part of the Juilliard School building by Pietro Belluschi, a renowned Modernist architect who had participated in the design of over one thousand buildings throughout his career. He blended the International style of architecture with a use of indigenous materials (i.e., wood for residential buildings and aluminum for tall office buildings), though his use of Italian travertine as cladding for the Juilliard Building would not be considered an example of this. Belluschi became involved with the Lincoln Center project in October 1956, when he participated in a two-week conference devoted to discussing the planning of the center. He was involved with the Juilliard project from its inception, having been brought in by Wallace Harrison of Harrison & Abramovitz. The president of the Juilliard School consulted with Belluschi on which architect to choose for the project, and though Belluschi had submitted a list of architects to be considered, he was ultimately chosen as the building’s architect. He associated with Eduardo Catalano (whom he had brought to MIT as an architecture professor) and Helge Westermann (a former student of Catalano’s). Westermann had established an office in New York, which Belluschi and Catalano used as a local liaison for the project.

The project had been put on hold, pending decisions on the final site and budget. When the project went forward in 1963, Belluschi had also been involved in the final stages of the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building), the Bank of America Building, and the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption (the latter two in San Francisco). Tired of battling budget restrictions and changing program requirements, Belluschi and Catalano had difficulty generating new schemes when the project restarted. Several of their previously proposed schemes were turned over to Robert Burns, Frederick Taylor, and Frederick Preis, three employees at Catalano’s office. Burns’ scheme was based heavily off Catalano’s MIT Student Center (completed in 1965). Catalano was regularly available for guidance and criticism on the project, whereas Belluschi would only stop in occasionally to review the work of Catalano’s office. Belluschi played a more public role, communicating with Juilliard and with donors. He also was highly involved in designing spaces like the performance hall lobbies and foyers.

Over the course of 12 years, the architectural team had developed approximately 70 sets of preliminary drawings.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro were chosen in 2003 as the design architects to redevelop Lincoln Center’s 65th Street corridor, after defeating Norman Foster, Richard Meier, and Santiago Calatrava in a 2002 design competition. Founded in 1979 by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (Charles Renfro became a partner in 2004), they are an interdisciplinary firm with few built works (most notably the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the High Line Park in New York City), but they have been highly influential in the realms of architectural criticism and theory, and were the first architects to be awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant. They are well known for a wide variety of artistic installations, built on the themes of display, tourism, surveillance, ritual, control, and selling and buying. The plan envisioned transforming West 65th Street into a “Street of the Arts,” making it a more pedestrian-friendly environment. Elizabeth Diller, partner-in-charge of the project, “imagined a Lincoln Center that is more Lincoln Center than Lincoln Center.” As she stated,

True to their methods of weaving architectural design with performance and electronic media, DS+R envision Tully Hall as an active participant in a performance, and not merely a house for one. Regarding the way in which the renovated theatre’s walls glow (a result of LED lights embedded beneath translucent resin panels), DS+R’s website states:

At Lincoln Center, DS+R recently completed the sloping grass-roofed Hypar Pavilion and Illumination Lawn, and designed the installation for Fashion Week 2010. Furthermore, they have redesigned Lincoln Center’s public spaces, enhancing the fountain in the Josie Robertson Plaza, installing benches, and creating outdoor seating areas. They embedded LED lights in the risers of a new grand stair that leads from Columbus Avenue to the central Josie Robertson Plaza, which display marquees and acts as an “electronic welcome mat.” The Promenade project depressed a roadway beneath the stair to enable vehicular access for dropping off and picking up patrons, in order to relieve congestion along Columbus Avenue during busy performance times. Along the 65th Street corridor, DS+R have designed 13 vertical 4-by-8-foot LED screens called blades that will provide information about the performances at Lincoln Center through the use of video and text. The architects designed the video content as well. Diller felt that the monumental scale of the buildings at Lincoln Center “needed to be softened up by a different, pedestrian scale,” noting that the use of such media is part of the architectural expression of this softening.