SUNY’s Potsdam Campus Plans an Inventive Performing-Arts Center

Construction of a new facility for dance and theater students at the State U. of New York at Potsdam is expected to begin next year. (Pfeiffer Partners Architects renderings)

The State University of New York at Potsdam is planning a $33-million performing-arts center whose exterior will call to mind the jagged Adirondack peaks of the North Country, and whose interior aims to create a lively urban space joining the new facility to an existing music-school building.

The building, which will give the university’s dance and theater students their first purpose-built spaces, was designed by Pfeiffer Partners Architects Inc. In the design process, say architects who have worked on the project, they divided the spaces that would need high ceilings (such as performance spaces and the scene shop) from those that did not (such as classrooms and offices). The low-ceiling spaces were then stacked around the high-ceiling spaces and a central area that is intended to serve as both a lobby for the performance spaces and a living room for the entire complex.

The result was an orderly mass that the architects then pulled apart, as though it were a rock being tapped with a hammer and splitting along its faults. That opened up sightlines and circulation paths, creating a structure that will be engaging to look at (and that will be transformed by the snows that blanket the campus every winter). Splitting the building apart also allows a series of clerestories that will bring light in during the winter months, when it is most appreciated.

The building, which is expected to be completed in 2013, will have a proscenium theater with between 300 and 350 seats, a black-box theater seating over 200, a dance theater that will also seat over 200, a cafe, movement studios, a recording studio, and other facilities. It is expected to earn LEED silver certification.

A single space in the middle of the complex is meant to serve as a lobby for the main performance spaces and also as a living room and crossroads.