Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House
Dallas, USA, 2003-2009
One of five venues that comprise the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House will be home to The Dallas Opera, Texas Ballet Theater, touring Broadway productions and numerous other performances. In a radically reconsidered approach to the traditional opera experience, the new opera house will continue to show internationally renowned performances of excellence and innovation.
Co-architects:
Kendall Heaton Associates
The new Winspear Opera House in Dallas redefines the essence of an opera house for the twenty first century, breaking down barriers to make opera more accessible for a wider audience. Responding to the Dallas climate, a generous solar canopy extends from the building, revealing below a fully glazed sixty foot high lobby. Beneath the canopy, a shaded pedestrian plaza creates a major new public space for Dallas. Around the Opera House itself, angled off-grid under the canopy, there is the Annette Strauss Artists’ Square, with its outdoor performance space for an audience of 5000, a smaller outdoor performance space with a café terrace and the main entrance to the opera house with access to the car park below.
Organisationally, the Winspear creates a transparent, publicly welcoming series of lobby spaces, which wrap around the rich red glass drum of the 2,200-seat auditorium. Entered beneath a lower canopy, the transition from the Grand Plaza through the foyer into the auditorium is designed to heighten the drama of attending a performance. Vertical sliding glass panels moving the full length of the east façade allow the building with its café and restaurant to be fully opened up. The grand staircase, flowing from one side to the other around the drum, links all the lobby spaces. Deep gouges in the drum itself allow the audience to move horizontally at each of the balcony levels.
The auditorium creates a sense of intimacy with the performers. Working with Theatre Projects, a horseshoe plan combined with the dramatic vertical stacking of its seating balconies ensure that the audience is as close as possible to the stage. Intimacy is further reinforced by emphasising the balcony fronts, with their white gold finish highlighted against the rich dark red interior. To heighten the sense of drama, there is a chandelier that ascends into the ceiling of the auditorium with its two giant rings and central dome at the beginning of the performance. To complete the auditorium, the distinguished Argentinean artist Guillermo Kuitca has designed a mesmerising curtain for the stage.
Client:
AT+T Performing Arts Center
Consultants:
Buro Happold/Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, Donnell Consultants Incorporated (DCI), Battle McCarthy / CHP & Associates, Michael Desvigne / Kevin Sloan, Dallas / JJR, Chicago, Claude R. Engle Lighting Consultant, 2 X 4 Design, Carl Walker Inc., Dallas , Citadel Consulting Inc., Deshazo, Tang & Associates, Inc., Engineering Harmonics, Inc., Good Fulton & Farrell, HMA Consulting, Inc., JGL Management Services and Cine Little, LZA Technology, McGuire Associates, Inc., Persohn/Hahn Associates, Inc., Pielow Fair & Associates, Seattle, Sound Space Design, Theatre Projects, Wilson, Ihrig & Associates, Inc.