Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

Template:Future building The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center currently under construction in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Once completed, it will be home to the Kansas City Symphony, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and the Kansas City Ballet. It is part of the ongoing redevelopment of downtown Kansas City, and will be located at 16th and Broadway near the Power & Light District, the Sprint Center and the Crossroads Arts District.

Construction

File:Pacconstruction.jpg

Construction photo as of August, 2007.

Ground was broken on October 6, 2006 and the Center will open in Fall 2011. The Center itself is a 284,780 square foot (26,457 m²) facility with two state-of-the-art performance venues: a 1,800-seat Proscenium Theatre and a 1,600-seat Concert Hall. The Kauffman Center will cover 9 acres (36,000 m²), including landscaped grounds over a 1,000 space underground parking garage. The technical requirements and exacting standards required of a facility like the Kauffman Center make it one of the most complex structures in the world to design and build. The cost of the project is approximately $413 million which includes a $40 million operating endowment.

Designers

The Kauffman Center was designed by lead architect Moshe Safdie, acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, theater consultant Richard Pilbrow, and engineering firm Arup. Local firm BNIM is the executive architect.

Architecture

The structure of the Kauffman Center is formed by a series of undulating vertical segments of a circle, forming the northern container of the Proscenium Theatre's backstage, and Concert Hall. They form an ascending, segmented, gently curving, crown to the building. From the crest, the roof descends in a curve following the geometry of a torus of light cables, metal and glass structure toward the South. The tensile forces of the suspended glass roof of the foyer are counteracted by a series of cables tying down the structure to anchors at the entrance terrace. The curved, segmented northern walls are sheathed with stainless steel and punctuated by perpendicular, acid-etched, limestone-colored, pre-cast concrete walls. The theater facades are sheathed with beechwood panels forming continuous, curved, stacked balconies. The various lounges form sculptural shapes visible under the glass foyer structure.

Performance and other facilities

The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts will house two performance halls:

• The Proscenium Theatre, will be an 1800-seat theater for general theatrical performances, ballet, and opera.
• The Concert Hall designed for musical performances, will seat 1600 people. It will feature vineyard-style seating in which audience seating will be on all four sides of the stage. It also will contain a pipe organ built by the firm Casavant Frères in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada.

The concert hall will be joined to the theater by a central glass-enclosed lobby, which will lead to the terraces outside.

Organization

The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Unlike other major civic construction projects, no taxpayer funds have gone into its construction. The city of Kansas City has, however, pledged to build and operate a parking garage at the Kauffman Center.

See also

• List of concert halls

External links

• Official Website