High-Tech Boxes in Drag: The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annondale-on-Hudson

by Ray Curran

This April will mark the third anniversary of the opening of what almost certainly remains the most noteworthy new building in New York's mid-Hudson River valley in recent years. Designed by Frank Gehry, one of the leading 'star-chitects' today, I believe that as architecture it deserves only mixed reviews. First conceived as a free-standing 900 seat concert hall, the Sosnoff Theatre was proposed to be at  the southern end of the campus adjoining Montgomery Place a landmark estate. Strong opposition to the box-like elements that would be visible from there led to its re-siting in a more isolated area to the north of the campus where the boxes could not be seen from anywhere. (Photo 1) There the project was expanded to include a student performance facility. Both the Sosnoff theatre and the student component are essentially contained in simple concrete boxes that are highly engineered for technical quality. The Sosnoff in particular was designed in close partnership with the Japanese audio engineer Yasuhisa Toyota who has collaborated with Gehry before. The stage is equipped with a sophisticated system of adjustable panels that are electronically moved for different types of performances. Richard Gordon, one of the musicians hired when the fine-tuning was being done to the system, relates that the sound quality is better than any similar mid-size hall that he has experienced anywhere. Since the opening more than 100 recordings have been made in the hall because of its sound quality bearing out his observation. The interior design of the theatre was also closely overseen by Toyota to the extent that the choice of all materials impacts on the sound quality. Apparently the seats were upholstered with cloth made in Italy that approximates human skin so as not to alter the sound when a seat is unoccupied. From a technical perspective the center seems to get high marks.

But of course these are not the things that are attracting most of the tour busses to the previously little-known Bard College campus. Undoubtedly the lure is the dramatic treatment of the front of the complex, the only part of the high-tech boxes that received the special Gehry trademark treatment. (Photo 2) Described by some as looking like a spaceship that crash landed on campus (and onto the boxes), the billowing metallic veils appear to have been draped over the boxes pell mell. These abstract and purely sculptural gestures bear little relationship to the high-tech boxes they have been grafted to and as such can hardly be described as a 'façade' in any traditional sense of the word. Rather, they are masks that disguise the macho boxes behind. Unlike the sophisticated high-tech boxes however the metallic mask is little concerned with practical issues. The grand principal entrance for example faces the void of a large open area while the visitor arrives from a parking lot to the side where what you see are the boxes.(Photo 3) From there you  essentially sneak around to get to the entrance. As for the lobby, the space created between the mask and the box of the main hall, it is like the interior of the fuselage of an airplane. The exposed structural ribbing provides the currently fashionable industrial aesthetic which we see often today. I personally find it intriguing but it is really a question of personal taste.

The idea of buildings as highly abstract sculptural forms that bear little or no relationship to the actual function contained but provide strong iconic quality is of course very popular these days; its what at least every corporation headquarter tries to achieve. The Sidney Opera House is a well known example of this concept for civic buildings and the recently completed Milwaukee Art Museum by Santiago Calatrava, another popular star’chitect, has 125-foot long wings that actually flap! Providing an icon for Sidney, the Opera House seems to have worked and no doubt the exhubirant Calatrava building may do so for the otherwise sober city. But the questions that these sculpture- buildings raises include, how long will they remain fresh and effective as symbols. In Milwaukee a similar attempt with the War Memorial Center by Eero Saaarinen in 1957 now sits next to the Calatrava building and is a pretty dreary thing. Even more serious is the very notion of buildings designed as isolated sculptural objects having no relationship to anything else. This unfortunately is what most American college campuses are like as is much of the modern environment today. The great charm of traditional cities like Savannah by contrast relies heavily on the exquisite streets and squares that lovely non-competing buildings acting together create. Special buildings like churches, concert halls, etc. provide wonderful accents that enrichen the context but also help to define the public spaces that make the city such a great place to experience. In cities like Savannah, you are always 'there' as opposed to places like the Bard College campus where, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there is no 'there' there. To reclaim a sense of place in a world that has become increasingly fragmented, I am not convinced that the architecture of competing icons is the road forward.

Back to Features.