West Texas’s largest dedicated performance venue, The Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, has opened in Lubbock, Texas.
The 218,000-sf hall will serve the community’s needs and anchor Lubbock’s arts and culture district. Performances and programs will be held in the 2,297-seat Helen DeVitt Jones Theater, the more intimate 415-person Crickets Theater, and other flexible spaces for rehearsal and performance. Seating in the Helen DeVitt Jones Theater can be reconfigured to accommodate the hall’s range of programming. The orchestra seating section can be set for traditional raked fixed-chair seating or for popular flat-floor general admission. Also included are a restaurant, two multi-purpose rooms, and an outdoor covered amphitheater.
The design of the $158 million hall was inspired by the colors and shapes of the landscape of West Texas. The building’s facades balance various approaches to creating shade to counter the South Plains Region of Texas’s extreme temperature fluctuations. A long overhang, angled concrete fins, and deep-set ribbon windows all act as architectural drapery to cool the building and filter light without obstructing views of the vistas surrounding the hall.
"Responding to the unique challenges of the site—from the intense Texas heat to its location in a flood plain—we have created a signature new space for the performing arts with world-class facilities that embody the spirit of the performers who will be gracing its stages,” said Matthew Lella, Principal at Diamond Schmitt, in a release.
The layout of the interior spaces will accommodate the hall’s wide-ranging performance line-up, which will include hosting ballet, symphony, school, opera, pop, and country performances; Broadway productions; and statewide band and choir competitions. Through the use of glass at ground-level entrances, the indoors and outdoors blend to create a seamless transition for visitors entering and exiting the hall. Inside, the building moves from spacious lobbies to more liminal spaces leading to several intimate studios and The Buddy Holly Hall’s two signature theaters.
The facility is targeting LEED Silver.
Related Stories
| Jan 4, 2011
An official bargain, White House loses $79 million in property value
One of the most famous office buildings in the world—and the official the residence of the President of the United States—is now worth only $251.6 million. At the top of the housing boom, the 132-room complex was valued at $331.5 million (still sounds like a bargain), according to Zillow, the online real estate marketplace. That reflects a decline in property value of about 24%.
| Dec 17, 2010
Sam Houston State arts programs expand into new performance center
Theater, music, and dance programs at Sam Houston State University have a new venue in the 101,945-sf, $38.5 million James and Nancy Gaertner Performing Arts Center. WHR Architects, Houston, designed the new center to connect two existing buildings at the Huntsville, Texas, campus.
| Nov 3, 2010
Park’s green education center a lesson in sustainability
The new Cantigny Outdoor Education Center, located within the 500-acre Cantigny Park in Wheaton, Ill., earned LEED Silver. Designed by DLA Architects, the 3,100-sf multipurpose center will serve patrons of the park’s golf courses, museums, and display garden, one of the largest such gardens in the Midwest.
| Oct 13, 2010
Biloxi’s convention center bigger, better after Katrina
The Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center in Biloxi is once again open for business following a renovation and expansion necessitated by Hurricane Katrina.
| Oct 13, 2010
Community center under way in NYC seeks LEED Platinum
A curving, 550-foot-long glass arcade dubbed the “Wall of Light” is the standout architectural and sustainable feature of the Battery Park City Community Center, a 60,000-sf complex located in a two-tower residential Lower Manhattan complex. Hanrahan Meyers Architects designed the glass arcade to act as a passive energy system, bringing natural light into all interior spaces.
| Oct 13, 2010
Bookworms in Silver Spring getting new library
The residents of Silver Spring, Md., will soon have a new 112,000-sf library. The project is aiming for LEED Silver certification.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Sep 13, 2010
Second Time Around
A Building Team preserves the historic facade of a Broadway theater en route to creating the first green playhouse on the Great White Way.
