Performing Arts

This story was originally published June 3, 2007.

Foster and Partners

The red "drum" will be sheathed in red glass and washed with red lights at night.

Already rising four stories out of the ground in a concrete horseshoe, the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts' Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is starting to take shape. The glass walls and the vast sunshade that will cover the front and sides of the building are still just designs by London architects Foster and Partners. But, two years and five months before the curtain is to rise inside the long-awaited facility, it's already a growing presence to the northeast of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Across Flora Street, excavation is now complete for the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus. But this companion building of the performing arts center is only beginning to emerge above ground. To the northeast of the Winspear, construction is under way on the expansion of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, designed by up-and-coming Portland, Ore., architect Brad Cloepfil.

At the moment, the Winspear is just a concrete arc plus some underground structures and a new 600-car underground parking garage. But what's already striking is how compact the audience chamber will be, compared to the vast expanses of Fair Park Music Hall.

Greater intimacy is a big part of the new building's raison d'être. The Winspear will have a mere 2,200 seats, as opposed to the Music Hall's 3,400. And, in contrast with the Music Hall's wide swath of seats on only two levels, the Winspear will layer one-third fewer seats on orchestra level and four wraparound balconies. The most distant seats will now be much closer to the stage, and the sonic impact should be improved for virtually everyone.

The success of Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, which opened last fall, reinforces that promise. Although the Canadian house was designed by a different architect, its size, proportions and configuration were designed in consultation with the same acoustical consultant, Robert Essert of Sound Space Design, who worked with Foster and Partners on the design of the Dallas hall.

You might think that everything about a building of this size and complexity would be settled this close to opening. But at a recent meeting at the construction site, Foster and Partners associate partner James McGrath said some of the finishing details were still being worked out.

Herewith, an update:

Glass: "The glass will be slightly tinted," Mr. McGrath says, "but will be low-iron, to keep it as transparent as possible from the inside as well as the outside." The canopy will help by keeping direct sunlight off the glass.

Lobby floors: The ground floor of the lobby will be covered in an Italian gray stone, honed smooth, but not polished slick. Upper-floor balconies will be carpeted.

Foster and Partners

There will be four levels of balconies above the orchestra floor.

Restrooms: There will be at least one toilet per 22.5 patrons, with twice as many for females – 57 to 34 – plus seven unisex/handicapped compatible restrooms.

Audience chamber: Both back walls and balcony fronts will feature undulating, convex shapes to help disperse sound.

Audience chamber colors: "We're still deliberating certain features inside the auditorium," Mr. McGrath says. But the basic color scheme of the audience chamber will be dark red. "The back wall will be rusty red," he says. "But that could change."

Audience chamber floors: They will be covered in dark wood – still to be determined.

Seats: Specially designed by Foster and Partners in collaboration with Theatre Projects Consultants, they will be 21 inches center-to-center, on average. "We've talked to 15 different manufacturers," Mr. McGrath says. To supply air more efficiently to the hall, and to keep temperatures as consistent as possible in the hall's multiple levels, each seat will have its own low-volume vent underneath.

Ceiling: Concentric rings of hard plaster will conceal lights and catwalks and help disperse sound.

Chandelier: The Foster design calls for a one-of-a-kind chandelier of retractable fiber-optic tubes, each about the thickness of a pencil, the longest about 45 feet long. "But it may or may not happen," Mr. McGrath admits. "We're working on how to make it work."

Jim Mahoney / DMN

Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is currently just a four-story concrete arc.

Behind the scenes: The back-of-house, including stage house, wing space, rehearsal hall and offices, will be sheathed in cast stone, with slot windows. The Dallas Opera will have offices on the top level.

Annette Strauss Artist Square: The design of the Winspear Opera House will incorporate this outdoor amphitheater on its northwest corner. The square will accommodate audiences of up to 5,000 for events ranging from concerts to theatrical and dance performances to multiday festivals.

Canopy: Reaching well beyond the glass walls of the building, what's being called a Grand Portico of silver anodized aluminum fins will shade more than three acres of outdoor spaces. Spacings and angles of the fins were determined after studying year-round patterns of sunlight around the building.

Facade: Making the building as open and welcoming as possible was a top priority. So the lobby will be wrapped in glass walls 60 feet high, framed in gray-painted solid steel. "The lobby space will be very open, very transparent," Mr. McGrath says. The southeast panel, near the ground-level cafe, will have a 2,100-square-foot section that can be raised for a walk-through outdoor-indoor opening.

The red "drum": The most striking feature of the building will be what the architects call "the drum," wrapping the balconies and rising through the canopy. It will be sheathed in red glass and washed with red lights at night.

Foster and Partners

A Grand Portico of silver anodized aluminum fins will shade more than three acres of outdoor spaces.

Restaurants: A café at lobby level is expected to be open for lunches as well as evening performances. A more extensive restaurant will be located on the second level, where the box seats are. The food services will be served by a separate catering dock.

Balconies: There will be four levels of them above the orchestra floor. They'll be fronted in GRFG – glass-fiber-reinforced gypsum, a thin but strong paneling – and punctuated with lighting sconces.

Plan your life

The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts has a preview center with large-scale models and architectural renderings of the two new buildings. It's on the mezzanine level of the Trammell Crow Center, 2001 Ross Ave. The center will be open during the CityArts Celebration, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and June 10. This Web site includes Web cams at the construction site: www.dallasperformingarts.org.