THE PERELMAN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER AT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
New York, New York
KEY AWARDS American Institute of Architects New York (AIA NY), Honor Award, 2024; Architectural Record, Top 10 Projects, 2023; Dezeen, Top Ten Architecture Projects, 2023; The New York Times, Most Glamorous Civic Building in New York, 2023; The Wall Street Journal, The Best Architecture of the Year, 2023; Society of American Registered Architects New York (SARA NY), Special Award for Innovation in Cultural Architecture, 2022; The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture & Design, The American Architecture Award, 2021; Architizer, A+ Awards, Jury Winner, 2019; Architecture Podium, International Architecture Awards, Second Prize, 2018; German Design Award, Special Mention, 2018; The Architect’s Newspaper, Best of Design Awards, Best of Design, 2017; Architect, Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award, 2016; World Architecture News, WAN Awards, Shortlist, 2016
CLIENT Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center
PROGRAM Performing arts center, including three auditoria (nominally 450-, 250-, and 99-person) which can combine to form seven additional room proportions, and a rehearsal room, all ten of which can collectively adopt more than sixty stage-audience configurations (ranging from 50 to 950 seats); flexible front- and back-of-house circulation that can create diverse patron entry/intermission/exit processions; and (A-Z) offices, performer support spaces, and restaurant/bar
AREA 12,000 m² (129,000 sf)
SUSTAINABILITY LEED Silver
COST $500 million
STATUS Invited competition 2014; first prize 2015; commenced construction 2018; opening 2023
DESIGN ARCHITECT REX
PERSONNEL Dylan Bachar, Wanjiao Chen, Adam Chizmar (PL), Maur Dessauvage (PL), Nazli Ergani, Alysen Hiller Fiore (PL), Sebastian Hofmeister, James Killeavy, Claire Kuang, Kirby Liu, Weronika Marciniak, Joshua Ramus, Raul Rodriguez, Emma Silverblatt, John Sng, Vaidotas Vaiciulis, Xuancheng Zhu
COMPETITION TEAM Giannantonio Bongiorno, Adam Chizmar (PL), Alberto Cumerlato, Mahasti Fakourbayat, Alysen Hiller Fiore (PL), Gabriel Jewell-Vitale, Min Kim, Dominyka Mineikyte, Elizabeth Nichols, Joshua Ramus, Raúl Rodríguez García, Michal Sapko, Emma Silverblatt, Elina Spruza Chizmar, Michele Tonizzo, Vaidotas Vaiciulis, Michael Volk, Cristina Webb
EXECUTIVE ARCHITECT Davis Brody Bond
CONSULTANTS Arup, Atelier Ten, CCI, Charcoalblue, Cost Plus, Ducibella Venter & Santore, Entro, Front, Jaros Baum & Bolles, Jenkins & Huntington, Magnusson Klemencic, Rockwell Group, RWDI, Silman, Thornton Tomasetti / Weidlinger, Threshold, Tillotson, Wilson Ihrig
CONTRACTOR Sciame
On the most significant site in New York City, The Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center (The Perelman Center) will produce and premiere original works of theater, dance, music, film, and opera, transforming Lower Manhattan into a vibrant, global cultural heart. Its concept embodies the Center’s aim to defy experiential expectations, provide unparalleled flexibility, foster artistic risk, deliver the most technologically advanced and digitally connected spaces for creative performance, and engage the local community. The keystone and final piece of the World Trade Center master plan, The Perelman Center embraces creation and memory with respectful individuality.
Amidst gleaming glass towers on the north side of the 9/11 Memorial, The Perelman Center is a pure form, rotated and elevated to accommodate complex below-grade constraints, address the 9/11 Museum and transportation hub, and engage the site’s main pedestrian streets of Greenwich and Fulton.
Amidst gleaming glass towers on the north side of the 9/11 Memorial, The Perelman Center is a pure form, rotated and elevated to accommodate complex below-grade constraints, address the 9/11 Museum and transportation hub, and engage the site’s main pedestrian streets of Greenwich and Fulton.
The edifice is wrapped in translucent, veined marble laminated within insulated glass. By day, the volume is an elegant, book-matched stone edifice, whose simplicity and traditional material acknowledge the solemnity of its context.
Façade detail: The Perelman Center’s façade consists of 3 ft x 5 ft, translucent stone panels integrated into insulated glazing and supported from long span, exposed steel mullions. This uninterrupted veil provides thermal, acoustic, security, air, and water infiltration performance, while allowing light to diffuse through in both directions.
Daylight illuminates the interior through the marble façade.
By night, this monolith dematerializes: silhouettes of human movement and theatrical configurations animate the glowing enclosure, an invitingly subtle revelation of the creative energy inside. While the building’s pristine exterior befits the site,…
…its muscular, utilitarian interior expresses the workhorse quality necessary for the changing nature of The Perelman Center’s artistic needs. Steel walls, concrete trusses, wood floors, perforated plywood panels, and other ruggedly beautiful materials encourage the frequent transformation of scenery, stage-audience configurations, and even the restaurant/bar and lobby. The building’s material duality—elegant exterior and robust interior—…
The Perelman Center is organized in three levels—Public (bottom), Performer (middle), and Play (top).
The Perelman Center is organized in three levels—Public (bottom), Performer (middle), and Play (top).
The Play Level is a pioneering, highly adaptable performance palette that combines both multi-form and multi-processional flexibility.
It holds three auditoria (499-, 250-, and 99-person) and a rehearsal room which can double as a fourth venue.
Using large, acoustic, guillotine walls that separate them, the three auditoria can be combined to form seven additional, unique performance spaces, for a total of eleven arrangements—including the rehearsal room venue—…
…which can all adopt manifold stage-audience configurations.
Shown here: an example of four different stage-audience configurations in the Play Level ‘base’ arrangement (499-, 250-, and 99-person auditoria and rehearsal room)
Model with examples of various stage-audience configurations on the Play Level, with auditoria in three different formations
On the perimeters of the rehearsal room and the 250- and 99-person auditoria, acoustic glass walls with integrated black-out blinds provide natural light into performances and rehearsals, and enable these rooms to be rented for events.
Rehearsal room with integrated black-out blinds lifted to provide natural light
Directors can further choreograph the audience’s entire experience through a zone of mutability around the auditoria. Acoustic doors between scene docks, scene assemblies, and a circulation loop at the floor’s periphery allow directors to apportion any of these areas as front- or back-of-house, and to form unexpected lobbies and performance ante-chambers. Also key to these permutations, baffles pivoting from the auditoria’s exterior walls can function as traffic valves to direct the audience into or past an auditorium’s entrance, or block access to anyone but performers. And finally, the four elevator/stair couplets can be used individually or in combination, creating unexpected access sequences from the lobby to the auditoria in any of their varied formations.
As a result of this immense flexibility, the Play Level is a constant source of surprise for patrons, …
Yellow = patrons / front-of-house
Blue = performers / back-of-house
• Closed acoustic door, closed baffle, and open sound & light lock direct patrons into an auditorium.
• Closed acoustic door, open baffle, and closed sound & light lock guide patrons around an auditorium.
• Open acoustic door, open baffle, and several open sound & light locks define zone solely for performers’ entry, preparation, and circulation.
• Four open acoustic doors, open baffle, and open sound & light lock define auditorium perimeter as an intermission space.
• Open acoustic door, closed baffle, and several open sound & light locks create ante-chamber for suspension of disbelief.
• Open acoustic door, closed baffle, and closed sound & light lock merge stage and public areas.
• 499-person auditorium / theater-in-the-round configuration / theater performance
• 499-person auditorium combined with scene dock / end-stage configuration / film screening
• 499-person auditorium combined with scene dock and 250-person auditorium / end-stage plus back stage configuration / dance performance
• 499-person auditorium combined with scene dock and 250-person auditorium / deep end-stage configuration / rock concert
• 250-person auditorium / traverse configuration / theater performance
• 250-person auditorium combined with scene dock and 99-person auditorium / flat floor configuration / immersive art show
99-person auditorium / thrust configuration / ‘cave’- and hologram-supported theater performance
…a ‘Mystery Box’ whose experiences are scripted entirely by each director’s imagination.
Right below the Play Level, the Performer Level contains all support areas for performances and artists, such as trap, dressing rooms, green room, musician room, quiet room, wig storage, and costume shop. Artists have direct, private access to the Play Level via a dedicated elevator/stair couplet, or—if blurring the line between performer and patron is desired—the other three public couplets.
Unlike most performance venues which place performer and other back-of-house areas below grade, artists are at the core of The Perelman Center, with generous accommodations and daylight filtered through the ‘stone-glass’ facade.
In contrast to the ticketed areas of the Play Level and the secure areas of the Performer Level, the functions of the Public Level can be enjoyed by anyone, anytime. This floor includes a lobby with information desk and coat check, and a restaurant/bar that can transform into a cabaret, a dance podium, a performance art space, or a ‘living room’ for Lower Manhattan community events such as voting. The restaurant/bar—used for refreshments during performance intermissions—extends north to an exterior terrace with views over the new sculpture garden nestled between The Perelman Center and World Trade Center Tower 1.
• Restaurant/bar in daytime configuration
• Restaurant/bar in performance intermission configuration with exterior terrace in background
• Restaurant/bar in community cabaret configuration
The Perelman Center’s exterior staircase brings theater patrons and visitors from the lobby back down to the street below. Half this grand stair offers generous seating for people who want to linger, watch the bustling city around, …
The Perelman Center’s exterior staircase brings theater patrons and visitors from the lobby back down to the street below. Half this grand stair offers generous seating for people who want to linger, watch the bustling city around, …
With its artistic freedom, openness to the community, pure form, and material duality, The Perelman Center galvanizes the culture of New York City’s lower downtown, and asserts its place amongst the World Trade Center’s constellation of world-class buildings.
With its artistic freedom, openness to the community, pure form, and material duality, The Perelman Center galvanizes the culture of New York City’s lower downtown, and asserts its place amongst the World Trade Center’s constellation of world-class buildings.
Image Credits: 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 35: Luxigon; 3: DBOX; 6: Front; 12, 18: Chris Janjic; 36: K18