When I think of the Lincoln Center Institutions, the idea of unity is a key element. The project was born to give a permanent home to the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Julliard School which were spread in different locations in New York City until 1969. The Pietro Belluschi, Eduardo Catalano and Helge Westermann brutalist style project has been the Julliard School until 2009 when Diller Scofidio + Renfro and associates renovated the original building bringing a new agenda: open the building to the city. In this context, which are the new urban relations that had been won and what others had been lost? What does it mean to “open the building” for the Julliard School? Design decisions give an impression of transparency and a democratic use of the public space, but if we analyze the new project in relation to the original one, the former had a different concept of what public means.
According to the architects, the main idea of the renovation was an “architectural striptease”, taking off the solid material that generates opacity and blocks the connection at the ground level. In the words of the architects: “the street itself became part of the theater”. In contrast, the original project solved the connection to the city using a series of covered in-between public spaces on a second floor that connected the public street on the ground level to the inside of the building. Moreover, there was a network of circulations and plazas that goes inside Lincoln Center block and connect the Julliard’s building all around, this spatial connection between both buildings used to give the idea of a unified campus space. Also, a second-floor public plaza was placed between the Julliard building and Broadway street to give continuity to the inside-outside public space. Now as part of the renovation, those original in-between spaces have been eliminated, leaving a series of points of no return in this exterior public circulation. This is explained because these spaces can only be accessed from the inside of the Julliard’s building and from the Samuel B. & David Rose building, Julliard’s housing (both private institutions). Also, the north and west circulation around Julliard had been blocked as private spaces, and finally, the south circulation has been trimmed with the Julliard’s new double-high access at 65th street, resulting in spaces without continuity.
One of the most important architectural design strategies was to uncover the Broadway façade changing the materiality from travertine veneer marble into crystal; as the architects claim “Displaying the studio on Broadway was like having the dancers see the world and the world see the dancers”. To prove this idea, I needed to experience the building from the inside. As a private institution, it wasn’t a surprise that the public was not allowed to enter the building, but as a 60’s secret agent I managed to get in as a prospective student. Hidden as a dancer, it was difficult to understand the renovation and the relation to the city from the inside because none of the corridors or rehearsal studios have any connection to the exterior, either physical or visual. Only as a superficial renovation, one circulation, two rehearsal spaces and a few administration offices in the Broadway façade had a new, but fragile visual relation to the city given from the natural light and the urban skyline. In contrast, as the audience, we can see a series of photogenic new perspectives of the building. From the inside, there is a succession of theaters, lobbies, gift shops, coffee shops, restaurants that gives us the idea of a contemporary public use. From the outside, the project constructs a cantilevered volume over what previously was public space on Broadway, living an outdoor sunken plaza beneath with a stair seating space that faces a four-story crystal walled restaurant. This architectonic gesture of “opening the building” and showing the inside, results in a luxurious private program that has nothing to do with the exposure of the inside performing arts of the Julliard School.
In contrast to the other Lincoln Center buildings, the Julliard School is the only building located in a different block. The original project faced this point with a pedestrian footbridge named the Paul Milstein Plaza that crossed over 65th street and connected the Lincoln Center Plaza with Julliard School access at the second floor. This provided a public space for the city and the students, a common space where they can share. The elimination of this space by the renovation was replaced by a light bridge in order to revitalize 65th street in between and make it more pedestrian friendly, but these have had consequences. Now the Julliard building is in complete isolation, even though with a common architectural language of diagonals and materiality, both buildings, the Julliard and the Lincoln Center, are hardly understood as a unity. Moreover, the common public space around Julliard building, from the original project, has been transformed into a fragmentation of unconnected spaces privatized by the School. For example, the times when students used to take their breaks rehearsing in the outdoor Paul Milstein Plaza while people pass by has ended, and now the students only inhabit inside the building, leaving them with a more distant relation to the city than the previous one. Furthermore, the new pedestrian 65th street renovation has resulted in the transformation of the ground level into a series of private programs that, because of their translucent materials, gives us the impression of being public; a restaurant, gift shop and ticket office, has transformed the relation to the city into a commercial one.
To conclude, the connection between Julliard’s School and the Lincoln Center has been broken, and now is only given by a few architectural design elements that give a fragile impression of unity. As a contradiction, programmatically they are independent, and with the public space in-between eliminated, Julliard’s has been isolated from the city and the public, leaving no opportunities for the city-student interaction. In other words, the artist has gone from the street and now only plays inside the fancy halls.