The exterior of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. Designed by Boston architect Moshe Safdie, of Safdie Architects, the $413-million center opened Sept. 16, 2011. |
The new Kauffman Center for the
Performing Arts faces downtown Kansas City, Missouri, with two
bulging stainless-steel onions, sliced vertically. They cover a
city block.
I liked them immediately. Their primal volumes glint in the
sharp sunlight as evocatively as the paint-peeling grain silos
that line nearby railroad lines.
The onions are the back of the building.
I walked around front to find the roof ski-slopes down to
form a tent of glass over the lobby. It takes 27 massive cables
to stake this off-kilter circus tent to the ground.
The architect, Boston-based Moshe Safdie, 73, fires off big
architectural gestures like a howitzer in this $413 million new
home for the Kansas City Ballet, Kansas City Symphony and Lyric
Opera. Placido Domingo and Itzhak Perlman headlined inaugural
performances Sept. 16 and 17.
The center’s glass-tent front opens a welcoming 330-foot-
wide smile to neighborhoods sloping away to the south. It stands
proudly as a city-scale object, defying the received wisdom that
such buildings should snuggle amid skyscrapers, spilling happy
patrons into downtown streets lined with sidewalk cafes.
Safdie saw that streets are lonely in Kansas City, because
people cocoon themselves in autos to cross vast spaces
alternately whipped by icy winds and roasted by heat.
Stays Upright
The exterior of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. Designed by Boston architect Moshe Safdie, of Safdie Architects, the $413-million center opened Sept. 16, 2011. |
I entered the lobby, the Brandmeyer Great Hall, which is
blindingly bright in daytime. More tightly stretched cables hold
the huge glass panels in place and keep the 65-foot-high canted
front wall from falling over.
Within the vast space, two cylindrical structures appear to
lunge toward the glass. They wrap a concert hall and a theater
for opera and ballet with concourses that enliven the lobby with
people on four levels.
To understand the bizarre result, picture a couple of
Guggenheim museums snuggled under the high-tech tent. The
references make no sense but the totality is undeniably
spectacular.
Cash-strapped taxpayers aren’t on the hook, except for a
$47 million city-funded parking garage, because the complex was
largely funded privately. (Missouri allowed givers a $1 tax
credit for every $2 donated.)
Philanthropist Muriel McBrien Kauffman started the building
project not long before she died in 1995. Led by her daughter,
Julia Irene Kauffman, family foundations would ultimately give a
whopping $135 million.
This costly urban bauble opened amid a grinding recession
because waiting wasn’t an option after 16 years of financial
setbacks and redesigns.
Orating Shriners
Resident companies leave behind a century-old hall built
originally for orating Shriners, not music and dance.
Rows of seats in warm pecan-colored wood sweep in great
curves around the 1,600-seat Helzberg Concert Hall. The 11 tiers
wrap the stage in what’s called a vineyard format that is the
trademark of the Tokyo acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata
Acoustics.
Mystifyingly, Safdie added shimmering metal mesh panels to
the wall behind the orchestra and exposes the soaring white ribs
that hold up the back of the building.
This concoction bears a family resemblance to Walt Disney
Concert Hall, the spectacular concert space designed by Frank Gehry in Los Angeles. Both share an acoustical concept by
Toyota. Gehry’s design has all the refinement and sensuality
Helzberg lacks.
The Kauffman leadership settled on 1,600 seats, many fewer
than most big-city venues, only after much debate. It’s a size
more likely to offer superb acoustics.
Reason to Swoon
I heard the symphony in rehearsal. Patrons of huge barnlike
halls elsewhere would swoon over the close-in viewing angles and
music that felt fully present -- even in the most distant seats.
The 1,800 seats of the Muriel Kauffman Theatre form a
three-tiered horseshoe of shiny balcony fronts facing a
proscenium stage. It is home to the ballet and opera companies.
The horseshoe form is time-honored in opera houses because
it puts a wall of patrons close to the stage. I found sightlines
compromised from many of those seats, which shouldn’t happen in
a new hall.
The Brandmeyer Great Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. Tensioned cabled support the glass wall and roof of the lobby. |
Safdie tries for theatricality, but he doesn’t have a feel
for it. The balcony fronts were cast in glasslike resin but look
like crumpled aluminum foil. Kansas City Art Institute students
splashed color across the side walls. Plaster tendrils radiate
from a softly curved half dome in the ceiling. If all these
tricks added up to anything, it would be dinner theater.
Safdie’s promiscuous form-making has a generosity of
spirit, but don’t look for finesse. This building dances as fast
as it can. Of course, that is an apt metaphor for the arts in
American culture today.
(For more information on the Kauffman Center and inaugural-
season events, which include five world premieres, see
http://www.kauffmancenter.org)
(James S. Russell writes on architecture for Muse, the arts
and culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed
are his own. Island Press has just published his book, “The
Agile City.”)
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