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Young Centre for the Performing Arts Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Two former tank houses become the home of a repertory theatre company.
The Young Centre is the home of Soulpepper—a professional repertory company—and the George Brown College Theatre School. Located within Toronto’s 19th century Gooderham & Worts Distillery District, a former industrial site transformed into an arts precinct, the Young Centre occupies two historic tank houses and the space between them. A new wood canopy marks the main entrance. A roof and clerestory supported by massive Douglas fir timber trusses spans the bearing walls of the tank houses and encloses the space between the tank houses to form the heart of the project, where students, actors and patrons can mingle throughout the day and evening. The plan integrates four theatre spaces of various capacity including a 400-seat flexible courtyard theatre and multivalent studio spaces that can be used for both practice and performance. The utilitarian material palette is limited to red brick and dark timber, concrete floors and painted walls, both to accommodate a tight budget and to reflect a commitment to drama as an art form that transcends its setting.
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The architecture creates a flexible, utilitarian setting to encourage vital interpretations of the theater through both study and performance, and to reflect a commitment to a universal art form that transcends its setting. The playwright Thornton Wilder believed ‘that theater’s ability to present the universal and the eternal made it the greatest of all arts.’ The raw yet warm aesthetic of the Young Centre provided an apt backdrop for staging Our Town as the inaugural play and to Wilder’s vision, without scenery or theatrical devices.
The intersection of a school and a professional drama company in one facility, with its array of multipurpose and gathering spaces, has generated a lively culture of collaboration. The architecture supports the original vision to create a flexible and timeless setting in which keep the art of drama vital through both study and performance.
Formal name of project: Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Location: The Distillery District, Tank Houses 9 and 10 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Gross square footage: 44,565 sq.ft.
Total construction cost: $10 million
Completion Date: January 2006
Owner:
George Brown College and Soulpepper Theatre Company
Architect:
Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects
322 King Street West
Third Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5V 1J2
416-977-5104
416-598-9804
www.kpmb.com/
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