Sidney Harman Hall - Harman Center for the Arts

A theater for Shakespeare set in the base of an office building establishes its own identity through design.

Set within a new office tower, Sidney Harman Hall's three-level glass façade is distinguished by a projected bay window establishing the building's identity and purpose, and directly linking the activity within the public lobby areas with the vibrant surrounding urban environment.

The public spaces are as transparent as possible: audiences gathering for a performance or in the lobbies at intermission are visible from the street, creating interest and engaging passers-by. The projecting glass bay window affords oblique views up and down F Street presenting patrons with fresh perspectives of the surrounding city.  The structural-glass projection also creates a marquee at the ground level, giving identity and prominence to the theater.
 
The floors of the public areas are carefully held away from the theater walls to allow the theater itself to be read as an independent volume.  This separation is also an architectural expression of the physical separation required to achieve an acoustically isolated auditorium space.  The inner “egg” of the auditorium is rendered in warm Venetian plaster, contrasting with the crisp transparency of the surrounding public.  The public spaces are connected to the auditorium by delicate bridges, heightening the sense of moving from the everyday to the world of the performance.

Designed to address the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s expanded programming mission, this new venue allows for a wide variety of staging configurations—proscenium, thrust, semi-arena, or bare—as well as for the presentation of dance and music events. The theater is designed to give stage directors the greatest flexibility. The change from one stage configuration to another is done without complicated technology. Using stagecraft, the proscenium folds and retracts into the fly tower, blocks of seats on scene wagons reconfigure the space, and a hydraulic orchestra pit rises to create a thrust stage.  Acoustic drapes behind the wood slat screens that define the hall’s interior are manipulated to support the different types of performance without altering the shape or character of the room.  

Formal name of building:
Sidney Harman Hall - Harman Center for the Arts

Location: 610 F Street NW, Washington, DC

Completion Date: October, 2007

Gross square footage: 72,340 sq.ft.

Total construction cost: $40,941,000

Owner:
Shakespeare Theatre Company

Architect:
Diamond and Schmitt Architects Incorporated
384 Adelaide Street W
Suite 300
Toronto, Canada
M5V 1R7
T:416.862.8800
F:416.862.5508
www.dsai.ca

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