Dalton Performing Arts
New York, NY
Dalton School’s Performing Arts Center provides improved basement level teaching spaces for Middle School & High School students in the Music, Dance and Theater programs. Curtains conceptually unify these distinct, yet related creative disciplines. A collage of curtains and similarly inspired forms and materials together modulate a playful environment meant to inspire the Harry Potter-like audience.
A row of newly-conceived Music classrooms, are arranged around a central, multi-purpose space, differentiated as a field of round lights and tech-lighting grid overhead. The center space has the flexibility to accommodate a full orchestra or be cleared to create an expansive dance studio. The corridor is animated by a drum-form that contains the sheet music library, and a piano-form, that provides a garage for the piano with the tech booth above. The classrooms face the street introducing natural light from light-wells, lit by structural glass that has been embedded in the sidewalk. Free-floating acoustical ceiling forms add an expansive gesture toward the light and provide the classrooms with a sense of dynamic performance.
