|
Experimental Media and Performing
Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, New York
By Deborah Snoonian, P.E.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s
new arts center aims as high in design, materials, and systems
as it does in program. Rising at the edge of the university’s
campus is the ambitious Experimental Media and Performing
Arts Center (EMPAC), which will house traditional performance
spaces for music, dance, and theater; high-tech galleries
for experimental and digital arts; and professional-grade
studios for audio and video production. Designed by Grimshaw
Architects (with David Brody Bond as architects of record),
the glass-enclosed, 203,000-square-foot structure features
a hot-water heating system integrated into the mullions of
the north curtain wall to mitigate the frigid drafts of upstate
New York winters. Its 1,200-seat concert hall will be enclosed
in a shiplike hull made of cedar planks; the audience will
feel like they’re sitting inside a violin. Acoustical
consultants Kierkegaard Associates tested 50 different fabrics
for the concert hall’s hung ceiling before settling on
Nomex, a canvaslike flame-retardant fabric more often used
to make jumpsuits worn by NASCAR drivers. Slated to open its
doors in 2007, EMPAC may just turn the modest town of Troy,
New York, into an avant-garde arts mecca.
| Click images to see
larger view |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
| |
|
1.
EMPAC will be nestled into a hillside site at
RPI.
2.
For ease of production and assembly, the concert
hall’s “hull” is divided into 12
sections, and the cedar planks arranged in a herringbonelike
pattern; about a quarter of the planks will be
milled with CNC machinery. The audience will enter
via six conical portals in the hull.
3.
The skylight, visible from the east entry, will
be made from ETFE, an advanced material that’s
related to Teflon. It weighs only 1 percent of
the equivalent area of insulated glass, which
allows the skylight to span long distances with
few mullions. The skylight would cost four times
as much if it were designed in glass.
4.
German curtain-wall manufacturer Gartner proposed
a facade-integrated heating system using hot water
pumped through the mullions of the north curtain
wall, the first large-scale application of this
technology in the U.S. Engineers Buro Happold
worked with Gartner to devise a proper zoning
configuration for the system.
5.
Panels of Nomex, an acoustical fabric, will be
rigged like sails to steel posts installed in
the concrete ceiling of the concert hall. Nomex
reflects high-frequency sounds but allows low-frequency
sounds to travel straight through and reverberate
against the ceiling above. The walls of the hall
will be made of cast stone.
Images: Courtesy Grimshaw
|
|
|
|
Video
