Jazz at Lincoln Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall
New York City
Rafael Viñoly Architects

Rafael Viñoly develops several intimate and often unique spaces in a new headquarters for jazz

© Brad Feinknopf

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By Sam Lubell

In 1998, Rafael Viñoly got the rare opportunity to create a new type of building when he won the commission to design the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the first performing arts complex created for jazz music. Most of its performance spaces dwarf traditionally small, sometimes shabby, if charming, jazz venues like New York’s Blue Note and Village Vanguard. Trying to maintain these spaces’ intimacy—a key ingredient for a type of music that depends on its audience for energy—at a larger scale was one of several unique challenges facing the high-profile project.

The program for the complex, on the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors of SOM’s Time Warner Center, included four performance spaces: the Rose Theater, the primary concert hall; the Allen Room, a cabaret overlooking Central Park, with room for 550; the unfortunately named Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, an intimate jazz lounge; and the Irene Diamond Education Center, a rehearsal space and recording studio also used for shows. Viñoly had to squeeze the performance spaces into a roughly 150,000-square-foot envelope within a fairly modest budget of $128 million.

The larger theaters, the Rose and Allen, strive to be at once capacious and intimate, flexible and unique. The Rose, which seats up to 1,231, includes seating configurations shallow enough that the farthest viewer is only 88 feet from the stage. Movable seating towers, divided into loges, increase the sense of closeness by wrapping the audience around the stage, while the loge’s syncopation breaks up visual rhythm, preventing the impression of a continuous sea of people. A retractable acoustic ceiling helps make the space adaptable for theater, opera, or ballet performances. Textured African Movingui wood lends an exotic refinement and helps seating fade into the background at performance time, while a ring of square-shaped lights sprinkles color onto the seats below. Backstage lighting peeks behind the seating towers, creating a sense of mystery.The Allen Room’s centerpiece, arguably the complex’s highlight, is a 50-by-90-foot double-glazed window behind the stage that looks onto Columbus Circle and Central Park.

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Formal name of Project:
Jazz at Lincoln Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
157,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$128 Million

Owner:
Jazz at Lincoln Center

Architect:
Rafael Viñoly Architects, PC
50 Vandam Street
New York, NY 10013
T: 212.924.5060
F: 212.924.5858
www.rvapc.com