PROVIDENCE, RI.- REX, the award-winning firm based in New York City, has been selected by the Corporation of Brown University as the architect for Brown’s new performing arts center (PAC) to be located in the heart of the College Hill campus. Administered and programmed by the Brown Arts Initiative (BAI)—a consortium of six departments and two programs enhancing arts offerings at Brown—to serve students, faculty, staff, the greater Providence community, and beyond, the highly flexible facility is targeted for completion in the late fall of 2020. The new PAC will be a leading-edge venue for music, dance, theater, creative collaboration, and innovation featuring the latest advances in acoustics, staging, lighting, and multi-media technology.
The University’s strategic plan, Building on Distinction, was launched in 2014, under the leadership of President Christina Paxson. In fall 2015, the University completed an operational plan to translate the plan’s broad, aspirational goals into concrete actions to be taken over the next decade. A central component in the goal to firmly establish Brown as a national leader in the creation of art and arts education was the construction of a new performing arts center—a flexible space for performance across disciplines.
“We’re excited to work with architects with the stature and experience to bring life to our vision for a state-of-the-art home for the performing arts,” said Paxson. “This new center will build on Brown’s rich arts heritage, serve as a venue for both traditional and groundbreaking new works, and strengthen our connection to the greater community.”
The PAC will be an easily transformable space for performances large and small, from full Brown University Orchestra productions to intimate recitals. Anticipated features include a main performance hall, a smaller-scale performance and rehearsal hall, a dance studio suitable for performance and rehearsal, an acting studio, practice and instruction rooms, lobby, and café. In addition to presenting traditional, experimental, and multi-disciplinary work, the new PAC will be an incubator for the creation of boundary-pushing, thought-provoking, multi-media art celebrated at Brown.
BAI Faculty Director Butch Rovan said, “We are thrilled to begin working with Joshua Prince-Ramus and the team at REX. They have demonstrated an ability to ask the right questions that get to the essence of who we are, as an institution and as people. Their penetrating intellectual and creative approach to process is one of the many reasons they’re a great fit for Brown and the performing arts center project."
With its proximity to the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts (designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and opened in 2011) and The Walk, a series of green spaces linking Brown’s main campus and its Pembroke campus, the PAC will anchor a cluster of arts facilities on campus. The siting will establish a vital hub for dynamic interactions including arts symposia, festivals, cross-departmental projects, and collaborations with the Rhode Island School of Design and others.
