On May 24, The Shed, a non-profit cultural organization that’s backed by some of the heaviest hitters in New York City, announced the completion of erecting the structural steelworks for the telescoping outer shell of a 200,000-sf artistic center, also called The Shed, under construction in Lower Manhattan’s west side.
This announcement came one day after former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he would be donating a total of $75 million to this project through his Bloomberg Philanthropies.
That brings to $421 million that amount that has been raised so far from this project’s $500 million capital campaign, according to the New York Times. The Shed’s benefactors include media mogul Barry Diller, and Stephen Ross, chairman of the builder/developer Related Companies.
While in office, the Bloomberg administration rezoned the area running roughly from 30th Street to 41st Street, and between 8th and 11th avenues for its ambitious redevelopment plan that included Hudson Yards and The Shed. Bloomberg personally spearheaded the idea of placing a cultural center in the midst of this office-heavy redevelopment. Construction of The Shed began in 2015 and should be completed next year.
When it opens in the Spring of 2019, The Shed will run along the popular High Line elevated walkway and garden. The organization is leasing the land, and will lease the building, from the city.
“This will be a platform for art, for artists to create on,” says Daniel Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor who is chairman of the board of The Shed. He said Bloomberg’s mandate for this project was that it be “unique” and put the lower west side “on the cultural edge.”
David Rockwell of The Rockwell Group (left) and Liz Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro talk about how The Shed was designed to be as flexible as possible to accommodate the uncertain artistic world of the future. Image: BD+C
Elizabeth Diller, a partner with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which with The Rockwell Group designed the center, says this project forced the Building Team to think about what the arts would be like in 10 to 15 years. Their conclusion was that this is unknowable, so the building needed to be designed with the utmost flexibility.
A manifestation of that flexibility is a gigantic movable shell, open on three sides, which can be deployed over a 20,000-sf open plaza to create a 17,500-sf hall whose lighting, sound, and temperature can be controlled. The 8-million-pound shell is mounted on 6-ft-diameter wheels that roll along slide rails. The structure, operated by 90-horsepower motors, can be opened or closed within seven minutes.
The Shed's movable shell sits on steel wheels, 6 ft in diameter, that roll on slide rails. Image: BD+C
The movable shell rises 135 feet above the plaza, and can support up to 4,000 tons of building systems and production equipment. Its exposed steel will be clad in translucent pillows of ETFE, a Teflon-based polymer, some of whose panels will measure 70 ft in length.
The plaza would have a theater seating capacity of 1,250 and a standing capacity of 3,000. (By comparison, New York’s Radio City Music Hall seats just over 6,000 people; and the city’s Beacon Theater seats roughly 2,900.)
The shell retracts into a base building with eight floors, each designed for multiple uses. The top floor will house a 3,300-sf rehearsal space, a 9,500-sf flexible events space, and a 1,700-sf labs dedicated to early-career local artists.
Below that is an 11,700-sf, 500-seat black-box theater that can be subdivided into three smaller performance spaces. The building will also include two levels of galleries with a combined 25,000 sf of exhibit space and 19-ft-high ceilings.
Back-of-house space for offices and mechanicals, dressing rooms, and storage is on the first floor.
In charge of programming The Shed is Alex Poots, the organization’s Artistic Director and CEO. Previously, Poots was founding Director of the Manchester International Festival, and Artistic Director of New York’s Park Avenue Armory. He said The Shed would “welcome artists and audiences from all walks of life.” The Shed has already launched a free, citywide residency program in dance activism for young people, Flex NYC, in cooperation with Reggie Gray of D.R.E.A.M. Ring dancers.
The organization also just hired Kevin Slavin as its Chief Technology Officer. Slavin comes from MIT's Media Lab.
Other Building Team members include Thornton Tomasetti (SE), Sciame Construction (CM), Hardesty & Hanover (kinetic engineering services), Jaros Baum & Bolles (MEP, FP), Levien + Co. (owner’s rep), Cimolai (structural steel), Cimolai Technology (kinetic services), and Stonebridge (steel erection).
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Eisenhower Theater, Washington, D.C.
The Eisenhower Theater in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., opened in 1971. By the turn of the century, after three-plus decades of heavy use, the 1,142-seat box-within-a-box playhouse on the Potomac was starting to show its age. Poor lighting and tired, worn finishes created a gloomy atmosphere.
| Aug 11, 2010
Giants 300 University Report
University construction spending is 13% higher than a year ago—mostly for residence halls and infrastructure on public campuses—and is expected to slip less than 5% over the next two years. However, the value of starts dropped about 10% in recent months and will not return to the 2007–08 peak for about two years.
| Aug 11, 2010
Reaching For the Stars
The famed Griffith Observatory, located in the heart of the Hollywood hills, receives close to two million visitors every year and has appeared in such films as the classic “Rebel Without a Cause” and the not-so-classic “Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.” Complete with a solar telescope and a 12-inch refracting telescope, multiple scientific exhibits, and one of the world...
| Aug 11, 2010
The Art of Reconstruction
The Old Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C., completed in 1867, houses two Smithsonian Institution museums—the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum. Collections include portraits of all U.S. presidents, along with paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings of numerous historic figures from American history, and the works of more than 7,000 American artists.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Pere Marquette Depot Bay City, Mich.
For 38 years, the Pere Marquette Depot sat boarded up, broken down, and fire damaged. The Prairie-style building, with its distinctive orange iron-brick walls, was once the elegant Bay City, Mich., train station. The facility, which opened in 1904, served the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad Company when the area was the epicenter of lumber processing for the shipbuilding and kit homebuilding ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Bowing to Tradition
As the home to Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals—the oldest theatrical company in the nation—12 Holyoke Street had its share of opening nights. In April 2002, however, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences decided the 1888 Georgian Revival building no longer met the needs of the company and hired Boston-based architect Leers Weinzapfel Associates to design a more contemporary facility.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Please Touch Museum at Memorial Hall Philadelphia, Pa.
Built in 1875 to serve as the art gallery for the Centennial International Exhibition in Fairmount Park, Memorial Hall stands as one of the great civic structures in Philadelphia. The neoclassical building, designed by Fairmount Park Commission engineer Hermann J. Schwarzmann, was one of the first buildings in America to be designed according to the principles of the Beaux Arts movement.
| Aug 11, 2010
Financial Wizardry Builds a Community
At 69 square miles, Vineland is New Jersey's largest city, at least in geographic area, and it has a rich history. It was established in 1861 as a planned community (well before there were such things) by the utopian Charles Landis. It was in Vineland that Dr. Thomas Welch found a way to preserve grape juice without fermenting it, creating a wine substitute for church use (the town was dry).
| Aug 11, 2010
Team Tames Impossible Site
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's oldest technology university, has long prided itself on its state-of-the-art design and engineering curriculum. Several years ago, to call attention to its equally estimable media and performing arts programs, RPI commissioned British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw to design the Curtis R.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Hanna Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio
Between February 1921 and November 1922 five theaters opened along a short stretch of Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, all of them presenting silent movies, legitimate theater, and vaudeville. During the Great Depression, several of the theaters in the unofficial “Playhouse Square” converted to movie theaters, but they all fell into a death spiral after World War II.
