Bard College Performing Arts Center
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Gehry Partners

Gehry designs monument to Bard's vision of artistic achievement

Courtesy of Gehry Partners

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

Scheduled to open in the fall 2002, this extraordinary building will serve as a landmark for both the Bard College campus as well as the Hudson Valley region of New York. It will provide dance, drama, opera, and music performance space for students of this liberal arts college that prides itself on its emphasis on the arts. The 105,000-square-foot building, which contains two multi-purpose performance theaters, is located on this bucolic campus in a beautiful area of tall trees and open lawns.

One theater features a concert shell and forestage lift allowing conversion to symphonic music performance. It has 800 seats in an orchestra section and two balcony sections. The house walls are concrete, providing the mass necessary for excellent acoustical reflections. A sail-like canopy clad in stainless steel panels projects out over the box office and lobby. The stainless steel panels loosely wrap around the sides of the theater toward the proscenium, creating two tall, sky-lit gathering areas on either side of the main lobby.

Theater two is a black box theater dedicated to student dance and drama productions. It has 200 retractable seats, allowing the theater to be reconfigured into a large, open performance space. The interior is clad in solid and perforated painted plywood panels. The exterior features concrete and plaster walls and an undulating roof clad in stainless steel panels. Two dance rehearsal rooms and two drama rehearsal rooms are adjacent. Glazed skylights integrated into the roof and operable windows allow natural light and ventilation into the rehearsal rooms. Administrative offices, conference rooms, and a secondary lobby and gathering area are also located adjacent to Theater two. The completion of this project is sure to bring Bard the resources it needs to compete as one of the nation's leading resources of performance education.

See more about the completed project project in the July 2003 issue.

Formal name of building:
Bard College Performing Arts Center

Location:
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Gross square footage:
105,000 sf

Owner:
Bard College

Architect's firm:
Gehry Partners, LLP
1520-B Cloverfield Boulevard
Santa Monica, California 90404
Phone 310-828-6088 / Fax 310-828-2098