Overture: Opera in Charlotte

The project scope for this studio is a Thermal Theatre, introducing the first opera hall to the growing city of Charlotte. The site is located in the Second Ward neighborhood of Uptown Charlotte, at the corner of S. Tryon and E. Stonewall. Uptown Charlotte is largely business-oriented with a mix of educational, cultural and residential areas. To the north the site is located near several art museums, a cultural center and a theater, effectively extending an existing cultural corridor. To the south it is bordered by I-277 with views to South End. The chosen location has the ability to play a very strong role in creating a prominent gateway to Uptown and the Levine Center for the Arts and has the potential to make a very strong connection between South End and Uptown. Its design must consider the existing cultural centers and welcome the business activities that currently dominate Uptown.

Traditionally, the opera has been a stage for the rich and political elites, an exclusive place to see and be seen through the procession to the opera hall. In order to combat this view, the design goals aim to promote the interaction between the general public and the patrons of the opera. Through the elongation of the theater procession with the placement of the café and box office on the opposite edge of the site, the space in between becomes a dynamic public space for interaction. The current site lacks vegetation that could aid in passive cooling strategies. The proposal addresses this by considering building orientation in order to condition the exterior space and create unique thermal experiences. The opera house has the ability to facilitate additional cultural performances and includes exterior venue space that utilizes existing topographical features to generate a variety of thermal qualities. All of these strategies are meant to better anchor itself as a prominent activity center within the city. Through these tactics, the proposal becomes the stage and audience of cultural activity within the heart of Charlotte.

Taking into consideration the history of the procession in classical opera designs, our design follows the approach of contemporary opera house designs by allowing transparency and blurring the lines of what is public and private. This was done by bisecting the site so that half of the lot was given back to the city of Charlotte as a public plaza and the other was set aside for the design of the Opera Hall.

A wide, monumental ramp begins the procession to the main entrance of the opera hall which gives people a place to congregate outside as there is little space to congregate with in the opera hall itself. It is here that storefront windows have the ability to pivot, opening the building to the public, blurring what is inside and what is outside. The ramp continues up to the third level allowing access to the seating there as well as a sloped lawn, created by the sloped roof of the restaurant, that looks back towards the plaza and the city which is a performance in itself. The procession turns around the backside of the building and steps down past the offices and rehearsal hall towards College Street and the Westin Hotel. An internal procession activates the facade through the movement of people, reinforcing the idea that the opera hall not only contains performances within; it can become a performance itself.