Studio: Third Year Spring 2011

Faculty: L. Seewang, L. Rice, S. Rustow and S. Betts 

The site, located near City Hall in Lower Manhattan at Nassau and Ann Street’s, is smothered by its towering context. From a reading of the program for an urban theater as an extension of the civic fabric, the project lifts and stacks the two required theaters. Giving the black box theater to the street – as an extension of civic life – allows the theater to spill out on to a series of steps which extend through the site; creating a through block of new civic space. The proscenium stage theater is lifted atop of a structural truss, housing the required administrative programs, as an object atop a podium. From here an elevated platform visually reconnects the site to City Hall creating a new plane for the comedy of the theater to engage with the symbol of the civic.