Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Address	130 Angell Street
Location	Brown University, Providence, RI
Coordinates	41.82817°N 71.40250°W / 41.82817; -71.40250
Owner	Brown University
Capacity	625
Construction
Broke ground	2019
Opened	2023
Architect	REX

The Lindemann Performing Arts Center is a one-of-a-kind performing and visual arts facility under construction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The building is located at 144 Angell Street on Brown's main campus in the city's College Hill neighborhood and will officially open in fall of 2023. The Lindemann and adjacent Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts are both utilized by Brown Arts Institute and comprise part of the university's Ronald O. Perelman Arts District. The Arts Center is named for benefactor Frayda Lindemann and her husband George Lindemann.

Architecture

Architect: REX / Joshua Ramus, Founding Principal

Theater Design Consultant: Theatre Projects

Acoustical Consultant: Threshold Acoustics

Designed by REX, the building features a main hall that physically adapts to accommodate a variety of performance configurations, in a manner similar to that of the firm's Wyly Theatre. The building's exterior is clad in fluted panels made of extruded aluminum composed of fractal-like fluted geometry. The color and pattern of the façade will shift in appearance with seasonal changes and times of the day.

The Lindemann provides Brown with a one-of-a-kind venue that houses performances, teaching, and research for music, theater, dance, and media. The radically flexible academic arts “laboratory” has five pre-set configurations—and an array of potential secondary modes—that enable Brown to alter the main hall quickly and easily. The primary options include an immersive experimental media cube; a 388-seat recital hall; a 275-seat end-stage theater; a 530-seat concert hall with a stage for a 100-piece orchestra and a choir loft for 70; and a large flat floor configuration. The building also houses an orchestra rehearsal/performance space (135 seats), a dance rehearsal/performance space (98 seats), and a theater rehearsal/performance space (50 seats). The building's total square footage is 101,000.

Construction

REX revealed the building's design in February 2019; construction on the building began later that year. Freeing up space for the structure's site required the relocation of a historic Victorian duplex from 130-132 Angell Street to a new site along Brown Street. Movement of the historic house was completed in 2018.

The Lindemann Performing Arts Center was topped off in December 2020. The venue is scheduled to open in October 2023.

Design Highlights

REX, Theatre Projects, and Threshold invented a new arts typology where all six surfaces of The Lindemann’s shoebox-shaped main hall modulate physically and acoustically to create five radically different stage-audience configurations—experimental media, recital, end-stage, orchestra, and flat floor—and an array of potential secondary modes. The automated and manually assisted performance equipment installed to make such transformations includes five suspended, four-tier seating gantries (two tiers for audience members and two for technical staff), forty adjustable acoustic reflector panels, seven motorized utility battens, three lighting bridges, two stage lifts, three orchestra platform lifts, six telescoping orchestra risers, three seating wagon lifts, a three-unit retractable seating system, five seating wagons, a ring of deployable acoustic curtains, and a complete technical gridiron fifty-five feet above the floor. The main hall transforms into any of the five primary configurations with only five technicians in three hours. The five pre-set configurations can accommodate Brown’s 100-piece orchestra (with a 70-person chorus), individual recitals, major theatrical productions, immersive video and scenic projection with 40-channel ambisonic audio, digital cinema, and traditional lectures and receptions, among many other options. The main hall seats 275 people in the end-stage configuration, 388 for recitals, and 530 in the orchestra configuration. On the lower level, the building contains three additional rehearsal spaces that double as venues. An orchestra rehearsal room doubles as a 135-seat performance space for smaller ensembles, a dance rehearsal room doubles as a 98-seat informal dance performance space, and a theater rehearsal room doubles as an intimate 50-seat performance space. Each of these spaces is equipped with infrastructure to support lectures, presentations, academic and extracurricular activities, and special projects involving motion capture, immersive video, and multi-channel audio. The Lindemann's shoebox-shaped Main Hall is designed to transform into a variety of configurations to accommodate a wide range of performances. The hall has five preset configurations ranging in capacity from an orchestra set-up to a seatless 40-by-40 foot cube. To facilitate switching between these configurations, the Main Hall features an array of automated and manually assisted performance equipment, including five seating gantries, a perimeter ring of retractable acoustic curtains, 40 adjustable acoustic reflector panels, three lighting bridges, and two stage lifts.

Gallery

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  Sharpe House was relocated from Angell street to a new site along Brown Street
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  The building under construction, December 2020
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  The building under construction, April 2022