Creating a New Blended Model for Visual and Performing Arts at OSU

Oregon State University’s Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx) is breaking new ground as a building that supports a blended model for visual and performing arts. The facility’s multidisciplinary program eschews traditional front-of-house and back-of-house separations, instead weaving student performance and learning spaces throughout the building. Our team’s goal was for the architecture to support the idea of “collapsing distinctions” between audience and performer, rehearsal and performance, students, and the public.

A Responsibility to Present Art & Engage Audiences

PRAx’s newly appointed Executive Director, Peter Betjemann, provided an apt summary of this perspective. “As a public institution acting on behalf of the people of Oregon and the world, we have a special responsibility at OSU not just to present art but to engage audiences. PRAx is much more than a new arts building. It’s an architectural and curricular space devoted above all to inclusivity—a place where students, visitors, and audiences will find heaps of educational content and boundary-breaking interventions in the old notion that art exists for a privileged few.”

Arts Spaces & Venues at PRAx

PRAx is comprised of three major venues and additional spaces that can be used for impromptu performances, lectures, and informal gatherings.

Recital Hall

The 500-seat recital hall is designed with variable acoustics to accommodate a range of acoustic and amplified performances—it will be used for OSU student performances, as a classroom for instruction and lectures, and as a venue for guest artists. The hall features a single-rake balcony design, allowing access to all seating areas, including the upper-level seats from inside the hall. This design emphasizes a sense of intimacy and direct connection with the performers on stage by eliminating a balcony overhang and encircling the room with audience members. The walls are wrapped in warm wood panels, shaped to maximize acoustic dispersion with assistance from suspended ceiling reflectors. Retractable fabric banners can also be deployed to fine-tune the room’s acoustic properties, customizing the hall to the performance.

Transforming Everyday Spaces into Platforms for Expression

The remaining spaces in PRAx truly bring the arts to everyday activities in and around the building. The lobby, stretching along the east side of the building, is a bright and airy double-height space suitable for organizing daytime visits from busloads of children that will be coming from across the Willamette Valley, as well as serving guests with drinks and hors d’oeuvres before an evening concert or show.

Since the project’s inception, Holst has worked with a committee that includes representatives from OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, as well as Capital Planning and Development, to craft the goals and needs of the project. There has always been an emphasis on the desire to create a space where students and the public can transform everyday spaces into platforms for expression. One of these spaces has been referred to as the Student Heart—a space available to anyone, able to comfortably host a string quartet, dramatic monologue, student film screening, or be a space for students to meet and rehearse their art. The Student Heart found a home in the south lobby with a platform seating area that can transform into a staged area for small performances or lectures. The open mezzanine above allows for views from both levels, while ground-floor windows bring natural light into the space and welcome passersby to engage with students and performers.

Exploring Possibilities for Mass Timber

Throughout the design process, we emphasized making the most technically excellent project possible within the cost constraints. The project is funded entirely through private donations and matching grants from the state of Oregon. Due to these constraints, the whole project team needed to work together to maximize the project’s functionality, flexibility, and potential within a fixed budget.

PRAx is meant to be a campus centerpiece for culture and creativity, crafted beautifully and sustainably. A grant from the US Forest Service allowed the team to explore the utilization of mass timber on the project—carrying designs for both a conventional steel structure and a mass timber structure through the Schematic Design phase. The grant aimed to exploit the efficiencies of mass timber to make it cost-comparable to steel and concrete. This pushed our team to think creatively, considering hybrid systems and the acoustic capabilities of wood.

In the end, we learned that a few key factors of a performing arts building stand in the way of mass timber gaining efficiencies sufficient enough to be cost-competitive:

• The large performance venues require long, column-free spans. While mass timber can span these distances, it does so less efficiently, leading to deeper structural members. Given that the upper reaches of these rooms are occupied by technical spaces (catwalks, lighting positions, etc.), the deeper structure would necessitate raising the roof, which has multiple trickle-down costs.
• The performance venues require complete acoustic isolation, which can only be achieved with sufficient mass. Solid concrete walls and a thick concrete roof are the typical construction that meets these acoustic requirements. By its very nature, any timber product will not have an equivalent mass, which makes it inappropriate for this application. These two volumes with concrete walls end up being a major structural system for the whole building.
• Another efficiency of mass timber can be a condensed construction schedule if repetition and a regular structural grid can be leveraged. Once again, unfortunately, a performing arts building contains very little repetition—instead, dozens of uniquely sized, shaped, and located support spaces need to be fit together for maximum operational flexibility and efficiency.

While we could not proceed with a mass timber structural system, our team studied and overlayed a wide range of sustainable strategies to align with OSU’s sustainability goals. For example, OSU has committed to a Carbon Action Plan that would result in net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. To help meet this goal, OSU prioritizes rooftop solar array installation on all new construction projects. Holst worked with our engineers to study all roof areas of the building, identifying the optimal locations for solar panel deployment to maximize exposure and minimize secondary impacts to the structural system or other components of the high-performing envelope.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion

Another repeated focus of the University was creating an intentionally inclusive building and site by acknowledging and implementing the principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI). The project team represented diverse perspectives and wide-ranging experiences, which each helped shape the building and users’ experience.

The principles of universal design were the driving force behind many big-picture decisions, including building siting (position a prominent entry near a public plaza/drop-off zone), interior circulation (clear expression of pathways and nodes, clustered elevators and stairs), and performance venue configuration (single-rake recital hall seamlessly provides wheelchair access to all sides and levels). Patron and performer restrooms promote gender inclusivity through full-privacy partitions and gender-neutral configurations. The building also features a dedicated room for nursing mothers and a separate quiet room reserved for building users experiencing sensory challenges. The design team met several times with OSU’s accessibility advocate as well as a third-party accessibility consultant who reviewed major deliverables. From gender awareness to mental health, the group worked through various solutions to ensure that all aspects of PRAx were thoughtfully considered and integrated as part of the project’s design from the earliest stages.

From its inception, the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts project faced numerous challenges, including a site change, evolving programmatic desires, and a fixed budget in a fluctuating market, not to mention a global pandemic. What kept the project on track was a deep commitment from every member of the team and a clear set of guiding principles that were established at the onset of the project and remained consistent despite the surrounding changes. Now more than ever, major planning and capital projects need clear, shared goals and a strong conceptual foundation to navigate changing times.