Visionary design for Symphony Center finally dies
Santiago Calatrava’s plan not considered feasible for 14th Street location
By Howard Pousner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
It’s back to the drawing boards for the architectural design of a new concert hall for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Celebrated Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s head-turning, $300 million vision for Symphony Center will not survive a proposed change of location to the Woodruff campus, arts center leaders have revealed. The ASO had unveiled the design in 2005 when it intended to build on a 14th Street site a block south of the Woodruff Arts Center.
The Woodruff board will vote Wednesday afternoon on whether to approve a 25-year master plan for the arts center that would include building the new concert hall at the corner of Peachtree and 15th streets. It would sit atop Callaway Plaza, now used for dropoffs and parking at the southwestern edge of the arts center, and require the demolition of a sliver of the existing building.
But what was billed as Calatrava’s “postcard” for Atlanta will not be transferred up Peachtree.
“Anytime you change sites, you have to step back and reconsider the design,” Woodruff vice president Virginia Vann said. “We know that a site dictates design, and to assume you could pick up that design and move it to a different site doesn’t make sense.”
She added that Calatrava has been advised that his design — which featured origami-like architecture topped by a soaring arch — will not be built.
“There will be a process” to select a design for the new site, Vann said, and Calatrava “will be invited to participate in that process.”
It’s not clear if that process will entail another architectural competition, which Calatrava won originally in 2002.
“We don’t know enough about the process at this point to know,” she said.
Calatrava rose to prominence for unusual structures of concrete, glass and steel that are both aerodynamic and anthropomorphic. The Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Museum of Art, his first U.S. building, received effulgent praise. Time magazine named it the best design of 2001.
The ASO was catching onto an international star when it awarded Calatrava the Symphony Center commission, but some potential donors never cottoned to the site along 14th Street.
Situated on the back of a slope, the center would have fit within a circle of Midtown high-rises. The design featured a ribbed-glass roof surrounded by a metal collar. A smaller building, housing a recital hall and learning center, would have been built on its south side.
When the ASO was performing in Symphony Center, hydraulics-operated “wings” — ordinarily folded around the glass roof over the lobby — were to have opened in a V-formation to reveal a broad panel of glass. At night, when the arch and wings were to be illuminated, the light emitted through the glass roof was to glow like a faceted diamond.
One arts leader called it “a completely new architectural statement for Atlanta.” But some potential donors, including Woodruff trustees, felt the site was wrong and that the design too costly.
Joe Bankoff, who took over as Woodruff CEO in 2006, makes no secret of his interest in continuing to build the Woodruff campus as a pedestrian-friendly nexus for arts activity intown.
The plan being presented to the board Wednesday, and already approved by its executive committee, is a “footprint for the campus of the future,” but with no architectural conception for the new concert hall attached.
The new master plan, developed by Boston-based Sasaki Associates, has focused on logistical issues, including whether the internal needs of a concert hall can be accommodated on the southwest corner of the Woodruff campus, one of nine sites the planners considered.
The new concert hall would connect directly to the arts center’s cavernous basement, an arrangement that would allow a 2,000-seat hall to fit on the small plaza. It would also allow for some existing Symphony Hall facilities, such as instrument storage and rehearsal rooms, to remain, thus reducing construction costs.
The board of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a division of the center, approved the new hall site, without a price tag or timeline attached, in mid-March.
The Calatrava design was to have cost $300 million, but fund-raisers couldn’t meet the goal. A total of $114 million was pledged by private donors before the campaign was halted two years ago.
Woodruff president and CEO Joe Bankoff said that money is “still available,” meaning the arts center is confident that donors are still on board even with the change of venues.
ASO and Woodruff leaders had said that public funding would have to pay for a third of the $300 million price tag of the original 14th Street plan, but a commitment from state and city government never materialized.
Without naming a figure, Woodruff officials said the new site would still require public funding in concert with private donations.
Bankoff said the troubled economy will not be an insurmountable challenge for fund-raisers.
“It’s the perfect time to plan for the future and to figure out what the new normal will be,” the Woodruff president said. “We’ll move forward when we can, given the challenges and opportunities the economy may present.”
Prev
Linear Mode
