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Left Alice Tully Hall’s new face exposes the lobby, and Juilliard’s new floors, to Broadway. The warp and weft of a cantilevered steel addition hits a high note for audiences and performers. ALTHOUGH IT IS ONE OF THE most often used venues in Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall hadn’t had a renovation since its opening night in 1969. And though The Juilliard School surrounding it had never faltered in its ability to develop world-famous performing artists, it was in much need of a makeover that would add practice rooms, classrooms, and office spaces. The long-overdue redesign, undertaken by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with FXFowle Architects in 2003 and to be completed this year, strips away the opaque facade at the base of Pietro Belluschi’s original scheme, revealing the entrance lobby and Juilliard’s inner workings to the street. The dramatic physical, and symbolic, gesture was made possible by Arup’s structural engineers, who developed a 50-foot steel truss cantilever that serves the dual purpose of creating a soaring entrance to Alice Tully Hall while expanding the school’s practice space overhead. Like the pieces performed there, the project was complex and multilayered. A tight urban site is adjacent to the subway, and a schedule accelerated to meet performance and academic Alice Tully Hall and year deadlines—even as the school remained fully operational during construction—presented significant challenges. Despite The Juilliard School these, the new space is marked by a transparent, column-free lobby created by a unique geometry of intersecting tilted planes defined 2 Metals in Construction Spring 2010 Alice Tully Hall and The Juilliard School 3 Its curtain walls may expose the building’s beauty, but its 275-ton system of steel trusses attests to equal endowments of brains and brawn. The trusses allow for the 50-foot cantilever to the property line, preserving exterior plaza spaces, and also for a 75-foot unsupported back span that supports as many as four stories on a single truss and creates a large, unobstructed lobby space with only three visible columns. Moreover, the steel design enabled the architects and engineers to deal with the technically demanding program in which they created a four-story expansion extending from the existing structure, whose elevations were not always at the same height. In addition to simplifying connections between new space and the original steel- frame building, the team could tightly control the geometry of custom shop-built steel assemblies to meet needs for dense mechanical distribution, theater lighting, electrical, high-tech audio-visual infrastructure as well as minimal architectural finish clearances. Although creating a welcoming gesture was the outward design goal, the need for ideal performance spaces that were isolated acoustically from one by the building’s north and south steel cables because they are must support facade cables that exterior fittings, but also to have another determined the building’s elevations, its Broadway property sensitive to building movements. are as much as 12 feet eccentric high transparency for occupants framework. Steel tonnage was line, and a sloped and tilted soffit. The Arup team utilized a closed to the support without the benefit looking out. To achieve this look, driven higher by the need to “We talked about doing a big loop structural system analogous of a back span. The engineers the entire 48-foot-high curtain support solid CMU acoustic gesture, in the spirit of the big to a tennis racquet. Through utilized a system of A992 Grade 50 wall system is hung from a partitions, isolated acoustic volumes of the building,” says bending of the structural elements W14x132 outriggers that cantilever 30-inch box-shaped girder with concrete topping slabs, and Sylvia Smith, senior partner in at the head and base of the wall, off of ASTM A53 Grade B 24-inch 1 5⁄8x12-inch flanges. Special heavy acoustic ceilings in sound- charge of the project for the tension in the cable wall is diameter by 1-inch-thick pipe. alloy stainless steel tension rods sensitive spaces for rehearsal, FXFowle, of the team’s initial converted to compression in the Bending in the outriggers is are concealed between insulating recording, and performance. design meetings. The resulting lobby columns; the cumulative transferred in torsion by the pipe glass units to pick up the dead The increased loads also required shape reaches toward Broadway, load at the head is used to to reinforced members in the loads hanging from above. Despite column strengthening at the creating a welcoming space that resist the uplift at the base. The existing building frame and to spanning as much as 67 feet to interface between the new and beckons visitors inside. heads of the cables are anchored members in the expansion. doubly cantilevered support existing buildings, where existing To achieve the dramatic visual between a pair of stiff ASTM A992 Challenging welds and stringent points (the box beam sits on wide-flange columns were plated and philosophical change Lincoln Grade 50 wide-flange beams that construction tolerances at the beams that cantilever from the end with ASTM A572 Grade 50 Center wished for, the architects span between the lobby columns. cable attachments led the of the cantilevered trusses), Arup reinforcing plates up to 3 3⁄4 inches designed two curtain wall systems The W24 members meet both structural steel erector/fabricator was able to limit the differential thick. The lateral system for the that give the building transparency strength and stringent deflection Metropolitan-Walters to shop deflection of the hollow structural expansion was achieved by by minimizing the visibility of requirements under high pretension fabricate the entire assembly as section to 2mm per 5-foot bay. infilling north-to-south bracing in cables, fittings, and component loads. At the base, uplift on the a single piece. This was required to prevent the aan the easternmost existing column B Facing A 50-foot steel truss cantilever Above The one-way pretensioned transitions. For Alice Tully’s cables is resisted by the Above the three-story lobby, glazing edge from hitting the line and with three braced frames creates the soaring three-story lobby cable wall system uses a minimum wan lobby curtain wall, a one-way foundation wall spanning between a hung glass-fin wall on the concealed rods. Concealed glazing I (one north to south and two east to in addition to expanding office space number of fittings while resisting pretensioned cable wall system the lobby columns. east elevation of the building’s clips at vertical joints transfer wind west) in the expansion structure; the and practice rooms for the school. cantilever movements overhead. and large single-glazed panels Where the lobby curtain wall cantilevered portion provides load to the glass fins via structural diagonal brace along the southern minimize the number of fittings turns the corner on 65th Street, natural light to the Juilliard School silicone glazed aluminum facade is the only exposed brace used. According to Matt Larson, the facade migrates away from spaces during the day, and is extrusions, and due to fabrication element. Duct sizes also had to be senior structural engineer for Arup, the main structural line and drops washed with lights at night creating, limitations for fin length, glass-to- larger to contain slower-moving the challenge to the structure is vertically with the sloping soffit of in Smith’s words, “an illuminated glass splicing was used to avoid (and thus quieter) air, but ducts for it to resist the amount of the expansion. Immediately south jewel box.” For this section, the the visual disruption of typical were carefully woven around the revious spread and this spread: tension exerted by the stainless of lobby volume, the structure goal was to not have any visible metal splice connections. P structure to maintain ceiling heights. 4 Metals in Construction Spring 2010 Alice Tully Hall and The Juilliard School 5 Seven trusses are positioned in larger spaces to mesh with the ALICE TULLY HALL AND THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL smaller offices and practice rooms existing building’s floor-to- on varying floors of the cantilevered floor elevations, as well as to Location: 1941 Broadway, New York, NY Juilliard School space to accom- accommodate various acoustic Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York, NY, modate the larger spaces required and performance floor build-ups in collaboration with FXFOWLE Architects, New York, NY by the dance studio, a double- throughout the expansion. Structural Engineer: Arup, New York, NY Mechanical Engineer: , New York, NY height black box theater, and According to Smith, it is the Arup Miscellaneous Metals Engineer: Anastos Engineering Associates, New York, NY the double-height jazz rehearsal building’s unique steel “warp and General Contractor: Turner Construction Company, New York, NY room. Truss chords were kinked weft” that enabled the architects Curtain Wall Consultant: R.A. Heintges & Associates, New York, NY in specific areas to allow passage to weave so many varied spaces Structural Steel Fabricator and Erector: through the story-tall trusses, into the 100,000-square-foot Metropolitan Walters, LLC, New York, NY fabricated from W14 wide flange structure, replacing the somewhat Miscellaneous Iron Fabricator and Erector: sections with maximum chord detached Belluschi design with a Post Road Iron Works, Inc., Greenwich, CT and diagonal sizes of W14x730. brightly lit tableau. Seen at night, Ornamental Metal Fabricator and Erector: In select areas, steel connections the transparent building almost Post Road Iron Works, Inc., Greenwich, CT; were designed in very tight resembles a page of sheet music Metal Teck, Inc., Bensalem, PA coordination with the architectural come alive as teachers and Curtain Wall Fabricator and Erector: W&W Glass, Nanuet, NY Above Steel framing simplified Facing The 100,000-square-foot clearance by adjusting gusset students, performers and audience connections between the new building structure, with its new elongated form, plates or using welded connections members, rise and descend and the original steel-frame building.