Entertainment

AUSTIN – The "aha!" moment hit me in an elevator.

What a shame, I thought, that the elevator's multicolored metal panels had gotten so banged up so soon after the opening of the Long Center for the Performing Arts.

Then it sank in: Those are hail dents, in panels recycled from the dome of the old Palmer Auditorium that stood here nearly half a century.

Stan Haas, lead architect of Austin's new two-hall performing arts center, has done his part to keep Austin weird. Those dented aluminum panels, now as then tinted four different shades, are a recurrent motif both inside and outside the building, most conspicuously in a big patchwork above the glassed-in main lobby.

And Mr. Haas has kept the ring beam and columns that supported the old auditorium's dome, 290 feet around, to create a spare, modernist plaza in front of the new complex. From its elevated position in Town Lake Park, just south of the recently renamed Lady Bird Lake, it gives a gorgeous view of downtown.

The old auditorium's stage house, said to be one of the biggest in Texas, has been reused, too, although the stage has been lowered 12 feet and the back wall moved to add backstage space.

It's a point of pride with Mr. Haas, one of the founders of Dallas' Good Fulton & Farrell architects before moving to Austin, that 65 percent of the material in Palmer Auditorium has been reused in its successor. And that something like 98 percent of the detritus (steel, concrete, glass and what have you) has been recycled somewhere.

You can't imagine a building with funky dented panels in Dallas' oh-so-tony Arts District, at least not since the temporary Arts District Theater got torn down. But Austin is so not-Dallas, so not about chic labels and international architects, although the Toronto firm Zeidler collaborated on the Long Center design. And Austin's new two-hall complex, delivered on time and on budget, cost all of $77 million, versus $338 million for Dallas' "starchitect"-designed Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre, due to open in October 2009.

The outdoor stairway to the Long Center's larger auditorium, the 2,400-seat Michael & Susan Dell Hall, is functional concrete, lined with plain gray cinderblocks. Carpeting in the lobbies is standard-issue, striped office stuff. Cherry paneling inside is attractive enough but nothing fancy.

Inside Dell Hall, function has defined form. Beyond a series of setbacks in front of the proscenium, it's essentially a rounded-back box. Interior geometries and materials were determined with acoustical consultant Mark Holden, who's also working on a complex of smaller performance spaces planned for the Dallas Arts District.

Walls are finished in a dark-green Venetian plaster that looks gray in the subdued light. Grids in front of the walls, which help break up sound reflections, are lighter green. On orchestra level, a slightly raised orchestra terrace, two rear balconies and three shallow side balconies, the 2,400 seats are upholstered in sage green.

Balcony fronts continue the lobby's cherry-wood motif. Overhead is a big white oval that also helps scatter sound and conceal lights.

For Austin Lyric Opera's April 18 performance of Carmen, at least in a prime seat on the orchestra floor, sound was well-balanced between stage and the huge orchestra pit. (It can accommodate 100 musicians; there were 62 for Carmen.)

Frequency response was even, and well-dispersed reflections from all directions (ceiling, side and rear walls and balconies) yielded a wonderful sense of sonic envelopment.

For amplified speech and music, the acoustics can be deadened by drawing sound-absorptive banners and curtains behind those grilles and grids at the sides of the hall. With the hall set for maximum reverberation, the sound for opera was glorious. One wonders if symphonic music wouldn't like a slightly longer "ring," but that's to explore on another trip.

The Debra and Kevin Rollins Studio Theatre, on ground level, is a flexible black-box theater that can seat up to 232. It's doubtless a welcome space for small-scale theater and dance, but sound-absorptive panels set into the dark cinder-block walls make the room too dry for chamber music.

One of the complex's nicest touches is a trio of big 1950s flying-saucer light fixtures rescued from Palmer Auditorium and installed in the lobby outside the small theater.

Opened in 1959 as Municipal Auditorium, later renamed Palmer Auditorium, the precursor of the Long Center was a vast combination of exhibition space and flat-floored auditorium. It worked well in neither function. Over all but the stage house loomed that crazy-quilt dome that usually drew rolled eyes.

The exhibition function was taken over in 2002 by the new Palmer Events Center, beside and slightly behind the Long Center. Meanwhile, the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Austin Lyric Opera and Ballet Austin continued to battle for time in the University of Texas' Bass Performance Hall, at 3,000 seats too huge to show any to best advantage.

Back in the 1990s boom, city leaders dreamed up a four-hall complex to serve almost any imaginable performance function. They hired the venerable firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which is planning Dallas' City Performance Hall, to design it.

But the bursting of the dot-com bubble doomed the $125 million price tag. Mr. Haas, whose TeamHaas firm has since been absorbed by Nelsen Partners, proposed the more modest plan that was eventually adopted; it allows, though, for adding more facilities as outriggers.

The Long Center is anything but chichi. The multitinted glass panels fronting the Dell Hall lobby even flirt with cheesiness, one gesture too many with the aluminum-panel patchwork above. And the single-pane glazing seems an unwise economy for a north-facing wall that will be washed with summer sun and buffeted by winter winds.

Already, simultaneous events at the Long Center and Palmer Events Center have overwhelmed the adjacent 1,200-space parking garage. On April 20, with a reggae festival also going on across the street, opera patrons had to wait as long as three hours to get vehicles back from valet parking.

Minor reservations aside, though, the Long Center itself is a thoughtfully designed building whose functional modernism fits Austin's no-frills attitude. You've got to admire the dedication to recycling, which actually raised the cost a bit. And, once you get over your double-take, you've even got to love those multihued aluminum panels. Hail dings and all. Long Center for the Performing Arts

Address: 701 W. Riverside Drive, Austin

Architect: Stan Haas, Nelsen Partners, Austin; with Zeidler Partnership Architects, Toronto

Consultants: Fischer Dachs Associates (theater design), JaffeHolden Acoustics

Cost: $77 million