The Juilliard School and Alice Tully Hall, New York

About

Part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the Juilliard School and Alice Tully Hall occupy a brutalist-style building carried out by the Italian architect Pietro Belluschi in 1969. Besides enlarging the built area, the renovation aimed to improve accesses, increase transparency, and adapt the building’s functioning to current standards. The original construction’s rectangular geometry expanded to take up the entire trapezoidal plot along Broadway, in such a way that the triangular plaza and the stairs were replaced by three levels of classrooms cantilevering over a large glazed foyer. A diagonal plane cuts the southeast corner to mark the entrance, producing the impression of a building breaking away from its foundations. The extension continues the gridded composition of the initial stone elevation on the long facade, but alters the position of the openings, making it clear that this is something different. The transversal facade, for its part, strays completely from petrous materiality, presenting a glass curtain wall that exposes to the exterior what goes on indoors, as much in the classroom levels as in the lobby and in the rehearsal hall above reception.

Sources

• Arquitectura Viva