A new permanent home for Hudson Valley Shakespeare, a professional non-profit theater company, recently broke ground in Garrison, N.Y. The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center includes a 14,850 sf performance venue that will serve as a permanent home for the theater company known for its sweeping open-air productions of classics and new works. The theater, located 80 minutes north of Manhattan, is set against the backdrop of the Hudson River and the surrounding landscape of a 98-acre campus.
The structure will be the first public purpose-built LEED Platinum theater in the United States and is the centerpiece of a design with extensive green space and rewilding across the campus, a former golf course. Designed by Studio Gang, the facility will be a singular theatrical destination for New York and the wider performing arts community and a cultural anchor for Hudson Valley, while providing the company with greater versatility for actors, audiences, and back-of-house operations. It will extend the viable performance season into the fall.
The theater’s curved, timber-framed grid shell and timber columns emerge from the landscape to create a dialogue with the Hudson Highlands. The stage’s proscenium arch is oriented to frame picturesque views of the Wey-Gat (Dutch for “Wind Gate”) of Storm King Mountain, the Hudson River, and Breakneck Ridge, and allows actors to use the existing topography to emerge from the landscape. Anchored by an open-air theater, the program is spread across several pavilions that include a back-of-house facility, a concession building, and public restrooms.
Each pavilion is clad in natural materials evoking the minerality of the region. Outdoor gathering spaces adjacent to the theater encourage visitors to connect with each other in an extraordinary natural setting, while a nearby overlook offers an intimate space for pre- and post-performance programming.
The landscape design rehabilitates the former golf course to restore native grasses and wetlands supporting biodiversity and decreased resource use. Nearly 14 acres of new plantings will include 250 native or adaptive trees, native grasses, forbs, and perennials, and bioretention areas that collect and filter stormwater runoff. The landscape is designed as an experiential sequence. Upon arrival to a gravel parking area, visitors encounter a mix of unpaved and accessible paths that guide them up and through native meadows, immersing them in nature and providing views out to the Wind Gate, and ultimately leading to the hilltop theater and gathering areas.
Much of the site was left open for future walking trails or other community uses, while 25,000 sf of picnic lawns, shaded by new native trees, offer an abundance of vantage points to take in the view and enjoy pre-show programming. The design employs several features to enhance environmental performance, including natural ventilation and brise soleil systems, low embodied carbon structure and cladding, and rooftop solar panels.
Project Team
Owner and/or developer: Hudson Valley Shakespeare
Design architect: Studio Gang
Architect of record: Studio Gang
MEP engineer: Buro Happold
Structural engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
General contractor/construction manager: Consigli Construction
Related Stories
| Nov 26, 2014
USITT Selects Bahrain National Theatre for Honor Award
The Bahrain National Theatre will be recognized with an Honor Award by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) in 2015.
| Nov 18, 2014
Fan of the High Line? Check out NYC's next public park plan (hint: it floats)
Backed by billionaire Barry Diller, the $170 million "floating park" is planned for the Hudson River, and will contain wooded areas and three performance venues.
| Nov 17, 2014
'Folded facade' proposal wins cultural arts center competition in South Korea
The winning scheme by Seoul-based Designcamp Moonpark features a dramatic folded facade that takes visual cues from the landscape.
| Oct 23, 2014
China's 'weird' buildings: President Xi Jinping wants no more of them
During a literary symposium in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged architects, authors, actors, and other artists to produce work with "artistic and moral value."
| Oct 20, 2014
UK's best new building: Everyman Theatre wins RIBA Stirling Prize 2014
The new Everyman Theatre in Liverpool by Haworth Tompkins has won the coveted RIBA Stirling Prize 2014 for the best building of the year. Now in its 19th year, the RIBA Stirling Prize is the UK’s most prestigious architecture prize.
| Oct 16, 2014
Perkins+Will white paper examines alternatives to flame retardant building materials
The white paper includes a list of 193 flame retardants, including 29 discovered in building and household products, 50 found in the indoor environment, and 33 in human blood, milk, and tissues.
| Oct 15, 2014
Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities
The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.”
| Oct 12, 2014
AIA 2030 commitment: Five years on, are we any closer to net-zero?
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the American Institute of Architects’ effort to have architecture firms voluntarily pledge net-zero energy design for all their buildings by 2030.
| Oct 2, 2014
Budget busters: Report details 24 of the world's most obscenely over-budget construction projects
Montreal's Olympic Stadium and the Sydney Opera House are among the landmark projects to bust their budgets, according to a new interactive graph by Podio.
