University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation
May 24th, 2022
NEWS
VSBA worked with the University of Pennsylvania to create a home for The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation (SPAI) at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. SPAI’s goal is to stimulate advances in the study, teaching, and development of the arts. Formerly an underused space without much comfort or amenity, the new Arts Lounge is now a wonderful place to view art, attend a concert, study, practice a play, or just hang out.
Penn’s Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is both a public venue — offering a full event schedule for Penn Live Arts — and an educational facility for the campus’s theatre arts department. SPAI’s goal is to stimulate advances in the study, teaching, and development of the arts. It’s helping to foster collaboration across disciplines and between venues while serving as an information nexus extending the arts across campus and into the city. We collaborated with a complex client team made up of representatives from SPAI, the Annenberg Center, and the theatre arts.
The 1971 building at 37th and Walnut Streets features high windowless masonry walls. It has several entries, but they were half-hidden, dark, and undistinguished. So our main challenge was: how can we overcome the building’s opaque facades and entries to promote activities and identity — and accomplish this through very strategic changes on a tight budget?
To do this, we worked from both the outside-in and the inside-out. Outside, we traced the shadowed entries with changing multicolored marquee light strips that cycle through bright, saturated colors. Nearby, new digital kiosks and wall-mounted screens offer info about events and activities. Entries are now beacons to people on and off campus. We also added fresh building signage, improved lighting on Annenberg Plaza, and improved circulation at the 37th Street entrance.
Inside, we transformed an uninspiring lobby atrium into an exciting new Arts Lounge. We added colorful furniture — deep blue settees, lively orange and red loungers, and low tables. Because ever-changing programs demand a variety of configurations, furniture can easily be rearranged to serve group gathering, gallery, presentation, performance, and other needs. Refreshment is offered through mobile coffee / snack carts and a prep kitchen. To draw people through the space, a vibrant new stair mural was also added during our renovations.
To transform one large masonry wall into a powerful space for art, we added a new gallery wall hanging system, track lights for the art, and theatrical spotlights. A new video server communicates with both the Arts Lounge screens and kiosks outside. Along the mezzanine, we replaced part of a low concrete wall with a glass railing, encouraging people up from the Arts Lounge to a cozy mezzanine area serving the theater department, SPAI offices, and others studying and hanging out.
Maybe most expressively, VSBA lit the Arts Lounge with a system of light rings at a variety of sizes that extend through the lobby, connecting the Annenberg Plaza and 37th Street entries. These temper the scale of the tall space, making it feel warm and inviting. At night, the glowing hoops draw visitors in; from the inside, they’re reflected in the large entry glass panes, appearing to flow into the distance…
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman Quadrangle, Irvine Audiorium
October 8th, 2021
The Perelman Quadrangle expands the original functions of Houston Hall across Penn Commons into parts of the surrounding Irvine Auditorium and College, Claudia Cohen, and Williams Halls. In the process each is preserved and adapted and helped to reestablish the importance it once held, on an augmented and replenished Quadrangle. The central space, Penn Commons, lined by Collegiate Gothic and High Victorian buildings, set with shade trees and enriched with seating, rostrums and heraldry, will once again form a memorable image of the University of Pennsylvania.
Irvine Auditorium was designed by Horace Trumbauer in 1929. Irvine is distinguished by its bold, brightly, colorful stencils covering nearly all wall surfaces, and its 30,000-pipe Curtis Organ (designed for the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial).
We adaptively restored the great hall of Irvine Auditorium as a multi-use performance hall with a 1200-seat capacity. Our renovations provide the auditorium with modern sight-lines and acoustical, lighting, and environmental conditions for music, speech, and organ performances, while we preserved its chromatic architectural glory and its historic organ.
Due to its great interior height, which produced long reverberation times, and its square shape, the auditorium was never an acoustic success. Because of this problem, it received very little use over the years, and was allowed to deteriorate. Working with acoustician George Izenour Associates, we improved acoustics by removing two side balconies and thereby reconfiguring Irvine into a classic shoebox shape, with acoustic baffles at the sides to reflect sound back to the audience. Removing the balconies also produced two adjacent two-story spaces — one which became a cafe, the other a 125-seat recital hall. A permanent acoustic shell was added to the expanded stage, projecting sound out to the audience. Moveable absorptive banners were added in the 120′ high tower, in order to control the reverberation times.
The decorative stencil pattern at the auditorium interior was completely restored to its original brilliance by Conrad Schmidt Studios, with the technical assistance of Noble Preservation.
Student practice rooms, meeting rooms, a rehearsal hall, expanded lobby spaces, and appropriate backstage spaces are also part of the restoration scheme. A new campus-side entry from the Commons to Irvine will facilitate day-to-day use and enhance Irvine’s participation in the Quadrangle.