Photos: Iwan Baan
The Perelman Performing Arts Center (251 Fulton Street) is now open to the public. PAC NYC is a 138-foot-tall, cube-shaped building with radically flexible capabilities designed by the architecture firm REX, led by founding principal Joshua Ramus, and created in collaboration with executive architect Davis Brody Bond, theater consultant Charcoalblue and acoustician Threshold Acoustics. The building is wrapped in nearly 5,000 half-inch thick marble tiles which have been book matched to create a symmetrical 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.
The building’s 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 99 to 950 seats, and with audience circulation and lobby areas varying to match.
PAC NYC’s inaugural season will begin with “Refuge: A Concert Series to Welcome the World” – a five-night global music series featuring a vibrant mix of acclaimed musicians centered around the theme of refuge. The season will also include conversations with celebrities including Kerry Washington and Jada Pinkett Smith, concerts by Tony Award winners LaChanze and Brian Stokes Mitchell, a new play written by and starring Laurence Fishburne and a new production of the legendary musical “Cats.”
Meanwhile, David Rockwell and his architecture and design firm Rockwell Group have designed the interior of the lobby and restaurant with a dynamic, glowing ceiling visible from the street to create an inviting entry experience. The lobby's restaurant, Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson, along with the bar and outdoor terrace, offers a new gathering space for the Lower Manhattan community and opens later this fall.
For more information, visit www.PACNYC.com
