Call it “a generational and stylistic dance between Frank Gehry and Maya Lin.” Similarly Gideon Lester, artistic director of Bard College’s Gehry-designed Fisher Center, referred to its upcoming neighbor – a Lynn-designed building that would provide studios for the center’s dance, theatre, opera and orchestral performances.
The college said Tuesday that the 25,000-square-foot building, which will cost $42 million and has yet to be named, is set to break ground next spring.
“We’re bursting really fast,” Lester said in an interview. “The Fisher Center is a hybrid building: it’s a professional performing arts center and it’s a productive home. But it’s also home to many of Bard’s academic programs in the performing arts. We’re using all of the building’s spaces all the time. “
Beyond needing more room, Byrd is hoping to double its growing cultural prominence away from its Hudson Valley campus—due in no small part to the Fisher Center’s role as an incubator for new shows. Among its successes is Pam Tanowitz’s “Four Quartets”, which in 2018 was praised by New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay as “the greatest dance theater composition of this century”.
Lin said their new building, a codesigned one with Belowski and Partners as well as theater and acoustic engineering consultant CharcoalBlue, was intended to provide both indoor and outdoor rehearsal spaces as the center adds more artists to the residence.
A grass-topped roof will emerge from the ground in a sloping semicircle that forms a natural amphitheater on one side, allowing for public performances, while on the other it features floor-to-ceiling studio windows. The revolving effect is meant to gently integrate the building into the surrounding grassland, while creating a structure that complements – but never competes for attention – the signature handicrafts of Gehry’s surroundings. .
“It was a dance,” Lynn agreed to the balancing act he said he learned as Gehry’s student at Yale in the 1980s. “He’s the only person who said, ‘Don’t worry about deciding between art or architecture, just keep doing what you’re doing.