Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), the cultural cornerstone and final public element of the World Trade Center site, opens with its first public performance today, September 19, 2023.
The new performing arts center in Lower Manhattan is a dynamic home for the arts, serving audiences and creators through flexible venues enabling the facility to embrace wide-ranging artistic programs. The inaugural year will feature commissions, world premieres, co-productions, and collaborative work across theater, dance, music, opera, film, and more. The vision for PAC NYC first began 20 years ago when Mike Bloomberg, as Mayor of New York City, included a performing arts center as the cultural keystone in the master plan to rebuild the World Trade Center site following 9/11.
Architecture and Design
Named for businessman, philanthropist, and benefactor Ronald O. Perelman, the Perelman Performing Arts Center is a 138-foot-tall, cube-shaped building with radically flexible capabilities designed by the architecture firm REX, led by founding principal Joshua Ramus.
REX’s design, developed in collaboration with executive architect Davis Brody Bond, theater consultant Charcoalblue, and acoustician Threshold Acoustics, is conceived for an artistic program that will have vast and varied needs to serve New York’s extraordinarily diverse arts community.
Three principal venues – the John E. Zuccotti Theater (seating up to 450 people), the Mike Nichols Theater (seating up to 250), and the Doris Duke Theater (seating up to 99) – can be used independently or by combining them. In all, the auditoria can transform into 10 different proportions that collectively adopt more than 60 stage-audience arrangements with capacities ranging from 90 to 950 seats, and with audience circulation and lobby areas varying to match.
The building is wrapped in nearly 5,000 half-inch thick marble tiles laminated into insulated glass units. The marble has been bookmatched to create a biaxially symmetric pattern that is identical on all four sides of the building. The marble façade allows light to radiate in during the day and glow out during the evening.
David Rockwell and his architecture and design firm Rockwell Group designed the lobby, as well as the restaurant and terrace. A dynamic, glowing ceiling in undulating sapele wood ribbons with integrated LED lighting is visible from the street and creates an inviting entry experience. A small built-in stage with tiered seating provides opportunities for a variety of performances in the southern end of the lobby.
The lobby's restaurant, Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson, which includes a bar, outdoor terrace, and private dining room, offers a new gathering space for the Lower Manhattan community and opens later this fall. Furniture made from walnut, oil-rubbed antique brass, blackened steel, and zinc was designed and selected to ensure comfort for diners, and vintage area rugs add softness and delineate the dining areas.
Visiting PAC NYC PAC NYC (251 Fulton Street) is free and open to the public seven days a week from 8 am to 11 pm.
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Press release and photos courtesy of PAC NYC
Photos ©Iwan Baan
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