Pratt Film/Video

SEPT 2015

firm: think! architecture and design site: clinton hill

ALEXA NDER SEVER IN/R AZUMMED IA

In the film and video department at Pratt Institute, CNC-cut aluminum wraps a corner of the screening room.

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ALEXANDER SEVERIN/RAZUMMEDIA 114

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”Animation and video have become like the written word. Whatever field you’re in, you’ll need them to communicate,“ Jorge Oliver says. With enrollment booming at Pratt Institute’s film and video department, which Oliver chairs, students and faculty were getting cramped in their old quarters in Clinton Hill, so Pratt freed up space by taking the campus store and relocating it—on the Internet.

That left a 15,000-square-foot prefab metal building empty, waiting to be transformed by Pratt alumnus Jack Esterson, assisted by two other alumni associates.

Despite Pratt’s myriad requirements for the facility—a recording studio, a sound stage with an “infinity” green screen for video

shoots, a screening room, and more—Esterson was determined to maintain the big-box feeling of the 23-foot-tall column-free interior. He accomplished that by designing independent volumes that either seem to float or, in some cases, actually do in order to create acoustical separation. The most prominent volume, the screening room, owes its angled shape to the raked seating inside.

To give the volumes their own identities, he turned to his long-ago teacher Haresh Lalvani, now a Pratt architetcure professor and sculptor.

Lalvani used algorithms to devise a series of shapes that could be cut out of the aluminum now wrapping each volume, reflecting the activity

Clockwise from top left: A sound stage features chairs by Karim Rashid and a green-screen for video shoots. Maple, more commonly used for flooring, clads the underside of the screening room’s enclosure where it faces the lobby. Glass seperates the recording studio from its talent booth. Aluminum frames the front of spaces including the screenwriters’ classroom, set on top of the recording studio.

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STAGE). FOCAL POINT: PENDANT FIXTURES. IWEISS: LIGHTING GRID. TECTUM: PANELING. NYDREE FLOORING: WOOD PANELING (SCREENING ROOM, LOBBY).

STEELCASE: OTTOMANS (LOBBY). LEGION LIGHTING CO.: LINEAR FIXTURES. KI: CHAIRS (RECORDING STUDIO). KINETICS NOISE CONTROL: BAFFLES. MODULYSS: CARPET TILE. KNOLL TEXTILES: PANEL FABRIC (RECORDING STUDIO, SCREENING ROOM), SEAT FABRIC (SCREENING ROOM).

HUSSEY SEATING COMPANY: SEATS (SCREENING ROOM). OBER: CEILING PANELS. MONDO: FLOORING (CATWALK).

THROUGHOUT DIRTY ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS: STOREFRONT SYSTEM. ORGANIC LIGHTING SYSTEM: COVE LIGHTING. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT. CHARCOALBLUE: ACOUSTICAL CONSULTANT. RODNEY D. GIBBLE CONSULTING ENGINEERS: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. MILGO INDUSTRIAL; BUFKIN ENTERPRISES: METALWORK. LEGACY BUILDERS: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

Clockwise from top: Ottomans in the lobby are upholstered in polyester. In the recording studio, maple baffles help manage acoustics. The screening room seats 96. Rubber surfaces the catwalk.

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FROM FRONT CASAMINA: CHAIRS (SOUND

within. Shapes for the recording studio’s panels, for instance, suggest sound waves. Installing the aluminum 1.5 inches away from the supporting walls, then lighting the perforations from below, also creates depth.

In contrast to the opaque aluminum compositions, the volumes’ upper levels and the mezzanine’s offices and classrooms are all fronted in transluscent glass.

A building for filmmakers should reflect different ways of using light, Esterson explains, adding that there’s a reason why he chose mostly grays for the interior: “the color in a film school really needs to come from the students’ films.”

Here, a flat-screen TVs display student work in continuous rotation.

—Fred A. Bernstein