LSA-Crosstown-Concourse.Pdf

http://plasa.me/umlwm September 2019 $10.00 Khalid The Free Spirit World Tour ALSO: Carrie Underwood: The Cry Pretty 360 Tour Memphis’ Crosstown Theater Show Technology Comes of Age Sound for Broadway’s New Oklahoma! Martin by Harman MAC Allure Profile Obsidian Control Systems’ NX 2 Console Copyright Lighting &Sound America September 2019 complete issue: http://plasa.me/umlwm ARCHITECTURE Copyright Lighting &Sound America September 2019 complete issue: http://plasa.me/umlwm On the Concou rse 62 • September 2019 • Lighting &Sound America A flexible theatre thrives in the heart of a stunningly reimagined vertical urban village By: David Barbour he Crosstown Theater, in Memphis, Tennessee is part of the 1.5-million-sq.-ft. Crosstown Concourse, a ten-story building originally built in 1927 as a Sears distribution center, which has been reimagined as a “vertical urban village.” Long abandoned, Tit was, only a few years ago, a glaring example of urban blight; now it buzzes with activity. As a bonus, the project has earned LEED Platinum status. The building is home to the vibrant organization Crosstown Arts, original - ly founded to realize the Crosstown Concourse project. Co-founders Christopher Miner and Todd Richardson began working with con - sultants on a feasibility study for the renovation even as Crosstown Arts began presenting exhibitions, con - certs, lectures, dinners, and parties. The founders drew on support from the community as various businesses and organizations signed on as ten - ants. The renovation came in at $200 million. “The retail portion of the Sears building closed in 1983 and the ware - house in 1993,” Richardson says, noting that with 1.5 million sq. ft. located a mile and a half from the city’s downtown, it was hardly a prime piece of real estate. The devel - opment team was assembled in n o m r 2010. However, Richardson notes, a H e i “Instead of taking a traditional devel - m a J : opment approach, we came up with o t o h the idea of a vertical urban village, P www. lightingandsoundamerica.com • September 2019 • 63 ARCHITECTURE The theatre accommodates 600 patrons standing, 425 in theatre-style rows, and 250 in banquet-style seating. with retail, a school, offices, and residences, which would Today, Crosstown Arts is one tenant among many. be a catalyst for bringing people back to the neighbor - Jazmin Miller, director of Crosstown Theater, says that hood; the idea was to have people there all the time, as Crosstown Arts takes advantage of Crosstown opposed to an office park that would be occupied from Concourse’s amenities including the ability to offer resi - nine to five. We had wonderful partners that were interest - dencies to individual artists. She adds, “We value conver - ed, including healthcare organizations like St. Jude’s and sation, so we have a café and a bar. We have a shared art- Methodist Healthcare. We have a new high school in the making facility. It’s like an art gym: You pay a monthly building as well as Teach for America. Before we closed membership and you can use our shops; you might not be financing, we were 95% leased.” able to own a CNC router, but you can come to us.” Interestingly, Richardson says the development team Crosstown Theatre, part of Crosstown Arts and located took inspiration from other, similar projects. “This is one of in an adjacent building, currently hosts a lively mix of ten buildings that Sears constructed in the early 1920s,” films, concerts, and, among other things, small opera he notes. “Two redevelopments were really important for productions and even TED Talks. Also, Miller says, the us: One is Midtown Exchange in Minneapolis, which is theatre “hosts private events; our high school tenants can also a mixed-use development with office and residential do their musicals there. Other tenants, like Methodist spaces. Another is Ponce City Market in Atlanta.” Healthcare, can have a place for meetings.” Also, Richardson says, “When the building closed, the “It really is one of the most amazing adaptive reuses,” neighborhood fell off the radar. We knew that renovating says the acoustician C. Russell Todd, of the firm n the building wasn’t enough; people needed to see the Akustiks. “And not just because of the scale and the o m r a neighborhood. Crosstown Arts started out in empty store - way it came about. Todd Richardson is a visionary in H e i m front spaces across the street, presenting hundreds of bringing it together and building it from the ground up.” a J : s exhibitions, concerts, and block parties to draw people Commenting on the vertical urban village concept, he o t o h here.” adds, “Normally, the community is a commercial area, P 64 • September 2019 • Lighting &Sound America with a residential spread around it. Imagine it being built Gerd Wuestemann, former executive director of Acadiana vertically in a building. You’ve got commerce down Center for the Arts (now CEO of Scottsdale Arts, in below, a high school, a residential area, and hotels with Arizona) acted as an adviser for the Crosstown project. suites for guest artists. Crosstown Arts has their offices Features of the theatre include a sprung wood floor there. There’s also a radio station and our theatre.” stage, modular open floor, and retractable seating. The per - The Crosstown Concourse project required the services formance space can transform completely from an open of three architectural firms: Looney Ricks Kiss, Spatial room with 5,000 sq. ft. of flat floor space to proscenium, Affairs Bureau, and DIALOG. The first two were involved thrust, black box, or theatre-in-the-round configurations, in with Crosstown Theater, as were Akustiks and theatre con - a few hours. It accommodates 600 standing, 425 in the - sultants Theatre Projects. The theatre is not part of the ren - atre-style rows, and 250 in banquet-style seating. ovated Sears building; it is located in a new structure in an A key to the room’s flexibility is the retractable seating adjacent courtyard. “It’s part of the campus absolutely,” on the orchestra level, height-adjustable seating platforms says David H. Rosenburg, the managing principal at by NIVOflex (distributed in the US by Steeldeck), with fixed Theatre Projects. “But there would have been no way to seats supplied by Jezet and portable audience chairs by make the theatre’s volume work in the existing building.” Wenger. Aaron Wong, a senior consultant with Theatre He adds that a back-of-house connection links the theatre Projects, says, “Trying to cram such a varied program into with Crosstown Concourse. a single small-type space” was one of the signal chal - Rosenburg also notes that Crosstown Arts wanted a lenges. “The room has to do many different things, and to venue that could be used by the entire community, hence, serve many different users. We pushed the seat count as the black-box format: “We worked with them to find ways high as we could while maintaining the integrity of the to accommodate the biggest number of people seating- room, also making sure it also supports the various equip - wise.” ment that needed to be in it.” In terms of lighting, Andrew Hagan, a senior consultant The theatre with Theatre Projects, notes that Crosstown opted for a full The theatre is laid out in the courtyard format. Rosenburg LED system, as many are now doing. He worked with the notes that it is modeled on the Acadiana Center for the company to provide the lighting infrastructure and to speci - The seating is retractable, thanks to platforms supplied by The courtyard format allows the space to be used for a variety of NIVOflex. performances and community events. Arts, in Lafayette, Louisiana—another Theatre fy the gear package, which has been supplied by Projects/Akustiks building—that is the adaptive reuse of a Mainstage Theatrical Supply; it includes ETC Source Four former bank. Like Crosstown, the space was designed to LEDs, ETC ColorSource CYCs, and Chroma-Q Color Force accommodate acoustic and electronic music, film, spo - strip lights, with control via an ETC Ion console. The the - ken-word presentations, dance, drama, and meetings. atre rents automated gear on an as-needed basis. The www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • September 2019 • 65 ARCHITECTURE counterweight rigging system, installed by iWeiss, consists and without losing any of the volume. of 20 line sets from the company’s Align system. “The whole project was a study in contrasts,” Butler continues. “You have this big, beautiful space that is, A crafted acoustical solution essentially, an empty cube—cool and dark and perfect. I Although Akustiks worked closely with Spatial Affairs on wanted to balance it with something that’s warm, that’s unexpected, that’s very dynamic and has this intimacy and human scale to it, so that you instantly recognize that it’s not made in a highly mechanical way.” The sculpture is made of poplar, a type of wood that is abundant in the region, Butler notes. The wood was processed into blocks that were 2" x 8" x 24", cut to the shapes of his original drawings, and assembled into 1'-tall strips. They are attached to wood anchors installed in the theatre’s walls. Echoing Todd’s comment, Butler says, “They look like curtains with folds.” However, he adds, “The read of the panels shifts, depending on your proximi - ty to them. A broad surface like this might read like cur - tains but, up close, it’s clearly wood, and heavy and not fabric.” The undulations, he says, provide “a visual analo - gy to what the sound is actually doing.” Todd compares the sculpture to a QRD diffuser, which typically consists of wells of different depths, causing a mixture of phase shifts that diffuse reflected sound.

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