Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte  photo credit to The Boston Globe article — *Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte* photo credit to The Boston Globe article

Sunday in the Park with George

I was thinking about a Stephen Sondheim musical this morning, Sunday in the Park with George. We saw it several years ago at Signature Theatre. The musical starts and ends with one of late-Impressionist best known paintings, Georges Seurat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte) now hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Signature’s productions are well done–and Sondheim musicals have been a specialty, cementing the theater group’s reputation. Signature Theatre grew out of Arlington County’s angel investment in local arts and has grown into a Tony-Award winning regional theater group.

The shows are put on in a black box theater (one of two) that puts the audience on the floor with the actors in half or less the size of a traditional performance space. The intimacy of the space is an important draw–one that the troupe embraces in their work. Takes a bit of creativity in designing the sets, economy being a necessity. Part of the entertainment is seeing what the set designers have created with each new show.

Signature Theatre’s trailer for Sunday in the Park with George

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine. Directed by Matthew Gardiner. Music direction, Jon Kalbfleisch; sets, Daniel Conway; costumes, Frank Labovitz; lighting, Jennifer Schriever; sound, Lane Elms; wigs, Samantha Hunter; projections, Robbie Hayes. With Dan Manning, Sadie Rose Herman, Lucy Alexa Herman and Joseph Mace. September, 2014.

What gave Stephen Sondheim the idea–was it the thought of a self-absorbed artist obsessively working over a painting oblivious to his model/possible lover, or the slightly off-balanced painting itself?

The audience knows the musical is about the painting, so anticipating its completion is the climax of Act 1, only what Sondheim does with it is the twist. He proliferates the show with characters from his own imagination, weaving stories that coalesce around the poses in the painting, all in Act 1.

Act 2 takes the show into an entirely different direction, focusing on George’s grandson, also an artist, but struggling to find a life in his art–the opposite issue of George’s self-absorption.

The painting itself has a place in art history–referred to as a prime example of “Pointillism,” the short-lived movement predating pixels, though essentially the same concept. The painting is a large still life with people–a deliberate oxymoron. Hand-rendered pixels, if you will, Seurat’s figures are frozen forever, posed like time stopped by a camera shutter. And Seurat even pixelated his own frame on the canvas, a subtle touch to a not-so-subtle piece of art.

The history of French painting is strewn with artificially posed people and creatures, from kings in silk stockings to maids bathing. But Seurat takes it into a different direction. At various points in the Signature show, they double down using cardboard cutouts as representations of the painting’s characters–aptly applied.

The title of the painting evokes the scene so well, how you could describe it any better? Possibly by creating a musical out of it.

D and I have attended shows at Signature Theatre going back years–to 2007 when we saw Signature’s first production in their new house, another Sondheim favorite, Into the Woods. We received an invitation as Signature’s thank you to the architects, engineers and builders who had seen the new theater to completion. Witnessing what the troupe could do with the space we designed was both humbling and stirring.

Thus the story of the architecture follows:

Into the Woods as performed by Signature Theatre   photo by Boris Feldblyum © 2007 — *Into the Woods* as performed by Signature Theatre photo by Boris Feldblyum © 2007

Shirlington Library & Signature Theatre

As an architect, how cool would it be to walk two blocks from the studio to see one’s own creation being built at the end of the street? A once in a lifetime experience–quite literally.

To explain how we worked, Greg Lukmire served as overall administrator, hiring our consultants, developing the building program, and critiquing the design as it developed; my job was to design it–and herd the consulting cats in the process. An associate in the firm, Rick Pinskey, served as the project architect, going further into the technical weeds as we developed the construction drawings.

Intro

“Shirlington is billed as "Arlington’s Arts and Entertainment District" and is largely mixed-use development based on New Urbanist principles. It is mostly middle-class residential, but like most of Arlington County has been experiencing an economic renaissance and is now home to many upscale dwellings and retail and service establishments that also serve the nearby Fairlington, Parkfairfax, Nauck and Long Branch Creek areas.”
from Wikipedia article on Shirlington

[Ed’s Note: Fairlington and Parkfairfax are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.]

Close to the same time we were designing the Germantown Library for Montgomery County, Maryland, we were also engaged by Arlington County–for a project in our own backyard. This was in the 2002 time frame. While the Germantown construction drawings and specifications were being completed by Shaun Curran, the project architect, and his staff, I began attending public meetings to plan the new library in Shirlington. The Germantown drawings were complicated by the geometry of the tubular rotunda intersecting the rectilinear forms and various the sloped roofs and dormers. AutoCAD had yet to perfect its 3D software, so we did it the old fashioned way– trained in geometry and using our powers of visualization. Shaun managed most of it, while I was able to interfere just enough to say I had a hand in it.

At the Germantown opening, we received a shocking comment that the project was well-done, shocking because it came from the County’s straight-laced contracts manager, who everyone said never smiled. He smiled at Shaun and I that day.

Meanwhile, an equally complicated building program for the Shirlington Library was emerging, consuming far more of my attention.

A Brief Detour Through History

Leading up to the start of the project, Arlington County was mulling over what to do with an existing branch library in Shirlington, tucked away in the middle of their Trade Center, the County’s euphemistic name for the sprawling maintenance yard wedged between an older townhouse development, a solitary apartment building facing I-395, and the empty space left over from when the Best Products department store was bulldozed.

The 50s branch library sat cheek to jowl next to the County’s small animal shelter that sorely needed expanding–as did the Parks and Recreation facilities. Our firm was working with the County to develop a master plan for the Trade Center property, which included, among other oddities, the truck repair facility, fire and police vehicle maintenance, a salt dome, the school bus depot and the public school offices, Parks & Rec storage, anything you could name that no one wanted in their backyard but still needed a home. Our firm was master planning a property that had grown by accretion since World War II.

The Village of Shirlington was equally landlocked and had likewise been worried over by the County planners since an earlier attempt in the 80s by the Oliver T. Carr Co. left it on life support, half the stores emptied since the development had been give back to the bank. By 1989, when we sought to move from Skyline at Baileys Crossroads, Shirlington offered affordable office space. It thrilled us to leave Skyline–a drab office complex sitting atop another struggling shopping center. Even Shirlington was a step up, landing us above a Kuppenheimer’s men’s store soon to close.

Kuppenheimer Ad in The Saturday Evening Post, 1920   Image from Internet Archive Book Images — Kuppenheimer Ad in The Saturday Evening Post, 1920 Image from Internet Archive Book Images

By the time we arrived, across the street was Shirlington’ s best draw–Carlyle Restaurant. Shortly after we moved into our new digs, construction started on Best Buns–surely a strategic decision as they understood our fifteen person firm needed coffee and scones to function in the morning. Best Buns became a family room to us; Carlos’s crew took good care of us.

The Best Products department store (no relation) in Shirlington had taken over the former Lansburgh's department store–see a pattern here? The Best Products chain–mainly known for a plethora of James Wine designed stores–went belly up in 1997. Sometime before then, the Shirlington store was closed, and the building knocked down for a parking lot. I’ll state categorically that the Shirlington location was as ugly as a big box store can be, and the D-19 dozers did the community a favor.

But the left-over parking lot gave the appearance of a bombed out neighborhood.

When the smoke cleared in the late 90s, Federal Realty Investment Trust (affectionately called FRIT) owned the Shirlington properties, and was working to expand the development into a more stable enterprise. It had become apparent, finally, that Shirlington could best survive if it became a destination for restaurant-goers. And instead of a core comprising office buildings, the proposed residential buildings would create a real neighborhood. Arlington County, in their effort to re-energize Shirlington, asked us to study potential sites for a relocated library. And rumor was the County was interested in finding a new home for Signature Theatre. Signature had grown from a County-funded startup into a reputable organization, with Eric Schaeffer as founder and lead director.

Ultimately, Arlington County struck a deal with Federal Realty for a land swap, allowing the developer to build a parking structure on Trade Center property in return for the site of a new library. On a parallel track, the County was strategizing how to move Signature Theatre into better than a converted auto repair shop. It seemed an excellent combination, a public library and black box theater–located at the end of the expanded commercial street backed up by high rise housing. It only took two years and dozens of public meetings to convince the citizen planning group to agree.

At long last, a master plan for the Village of Shirlington placed the new library and theater complex at the end of Campbell Avenue.

Village at Shirlington Master Plan    image provided by Federal Realty, © 2007 — Village at Shirlington Master Plan image provided by Federal Realty, © 2007

Planning a New Library and Theater

Performing arts facilities tend to be aesthetic challenges, since the majority of the space is hidden behind mostly blank facades. The back of house functions can often be larger than the theater space itself. Whereas, what Shirlington needed most was an ‘anchor store’, something to attract people to the burgeoning neighborhood of restaurants. A one-story 15,000 square foot neighborhood library wasn’t by itself going to do it. Combining the library with a performing arts venue gave it needed critical mass. The library would find itself in a strategic location for walk-in patrons, and theater goers would enjoy dinner and theater evenings, so the synergy was ready made.

Arlington has a long tradition of planting public infrastructure in key locations, seeding the urban core and encouraging further neighborhood development.

However, we were instructed that the site in Shirlington also needed to provide a public open space according to the County plan–the sole pedestrian space additional to the sidewalks in Shirlington. The only other was the linear park and dog run on the far side of Arlington Mill Drive paralleling Four Mile Run. The library site, to put it mildly, was ‘constrained,’ the proverbial 10 pounds in a 5 pound box. Being backed up to Trade Center vehicle repair facilities, one had to wonder what petroleum leaks going back to the 40s we might discover (unearth?) in the process.

The project, all told, took seven years to complete, one of the longest projects the Lukmire Partnership ever tackled–and the longest project in my career (other than Metro stations I’d designed earlier) until we became involved in the Silver Spring Library.

Design Parti [1]

Where’s the door? Arrival and departure is largely how an urban building is perceived. It is the art of addressing architecture in an urban setting where only a portion of the building is visible–the rest of which sits cheek to jowl by its neighbors.

In my mind the two separate facilities wanted a single entrance to increase the drama, a single, grand space that advertised both. In Eric Schaeffer’s mind, Signature’s founder and artistic director, the theater needed its own identity. The library needed to have walk-in access from the street. Being three times the size of the library, the theater complex would be a blank facade; placing it at street level would remove visible pedestrian activity. Arriving at the theater from the parking garage behind it meant a significant portion of its audience would scarcely need to step foot beyond the immediate environs. And due to community insistence for a public plaza, the complex was pushed hard against the rear of the property–against the Trade Center with no space for landscaping, or view.

We felt the library needed to take a prime position at ground level, with a major granite shaft marking the entrance, visible from two blocks away. But we also wanted to respect Signature’s off-beat, even bohemian tradition; it would be the building’s secondary tenant. Keeping Eric Schaeffer happy, we planned a second entrance for the theater–with a second vertical shaft celebrating the street level lobby and ticket office. That initial conceptual organization carried through to the final design, even while what did change was the look.

With a very vocal, if not vociferous community attending every single public meeting (like several dozen) the County needed renderings of every conceptual plan we produced along the way, option after option. This was early in the age of computer-aided design, so rather than wrestle with a clunky version of 3D-Max, we retained Ravena Shaeffer, a rendering artist, for the purpose, and we worked with her to select the best views.

[1] Parti: from the French parti pris referring to an underlying architectural concept.

Rendering of Option 4 Ravena Schaeffer © 2004

Slimmed down versions of these early studies led to a more literal depiction of the theater lobby as a linear glass and steel bridge spanning across the face of the building like a brow over top of the library, intercepted only by the two main entrances.

[Shirlington Library & Signature Theatre   photo by Eric Taylor, © 2007 — [Shirlington Library & Signature Theatre photo by Eric Taylor, © 2007

Signature Theatre would move from a low-slung former garage repurposed as a black box theater, though not so transformed from its original use. Signature had the funk, to be sure. When we began thinking about unfinished spaces, we were talking their language. The building’s cast-in-place concrete structure (including ceilings) were to be left exposed to view–mainly as means of creating as much height and volume as we could for the major spaces in both the library and the theater.

Concrete seemed a natural option for the structure. Normally higher priced than steel and subject to slower construction methods, it has its own advantages, a primary one being its inherent fire protection characteristics. Given the sad history of fires in performance spaces with their concentrations of people, they are treated carefully for fire hazard. Libraries also gather people ‘in assembly’ if not in the same concentration. When we were informed of the acoustic separation requirements between library and the theater where Hedwig and the Angry Inch was expected to be performed at rock musical volumes, the density of concrete and concrete masonry would help overcome the problem.

Low-flying military helicopters following I-395 corridor carrying generals and admirals on their commutes to and from the nearby Pentagon did nothing to improve the acoustic conditions we were dealing with.

However when Signature’s theater consultants finally issued their specifications (when we were well into the construction drawing phase) we learned they required a second concrete box be built within the overall concrete building shell, walls, floor and roof all separated by neoprene isolators from the building’s concrete shell–like the ever-popular Matryoshka nesting dolls. Oy Vey! When our structural engineer (who’d already finished calculating the building weight of concrete), was informed, he wasn’t a happy camper–nor were we, who were tasked with finding a way to build this contraption. “Well you don’t want the library patrons complaining, do you?” A conversation with unmentionable language commenced with said theater consultants.

Intending to leave the structural concrete frame largely exposed, the primary shape-making of the interior spaces became a work of sculpting the structure itself, with the minimal introduction of additional forms where required for program.

The Library’s interior is largely open, in a geometry of closely spaced columns (carrying the double load of the floating concrete theater “boxes” above). A multi-media meeting / classroom space was rotated in plan at a 1:2 diagonal increasing its clear area to meet the program. It is the singular intrusion on an otherwise pure square grid of columns. The program of this room includes support for video filming and AV broadcasts for education curriculum. We extended the diagonal wall toward the front entrance to form one wall of an after-hours side entry. At the front of the library, and very visible from the plaza, is a sweeping curved structural steel & black Corian computer desk, topped by a streaming digital board for broadcasting current events after hours when the plaza is still in use.

The library was increased in height, amplifying the amount of natural light let into the reading space and suggesting major reading rooms from earlier times. Because the building backs directly to the County Trade Center (and its utilitarian trades buildings and open yard storage), views from the library terminate in a narrow walled garden, done in an abstract Japanese style of black beach rock and board-formed concrete. As found space between the building and a service drive directly behind it, the abstract garden provides natural light entering the rear of the library, adjusts for grade and importantly blocks view of the industrial area behind it.

The only non-library public space is the street-level theater lobby and ticket office.

Shirlington Library floor plan    The Lukmire Partnership, Inc. © 2007 — Shirlington Library floor plan The Lukmire Partnership, Inc. © 2007

Signature Theatre’s interior is a more complicated affair, most of which is invisible from the street. With the street level entrance set to one side of the building’s principal mass, it was important to announce the theater entrance without distracting from the primary facade.

A primary design goal was to engage theater patrons in an arrival ritual, from the relatively discrete side street lobby and a wide, sweeping stair rising in a three story space leading the eye toward the theater’s lobby balcony above. We designed the lobby interior to be read as a tall, linear volume (three stories high, matching the height of the major black box), with a lower “bridge” element projecting over the public plaza.

The bridge, being itself sixteen feet tall, is only lower by contrast, but the transition in height yields opportunity for a more intimate series of seating groups and high top tables encouraging patrons to the glass and views of the plaza and street scene below. Likewise the theater patrons become actors performing for pedestrians on the street.

[Ed’s Note: VOA Associates developed the final floor plans and interior finishes for the theater under contract with Signature Theatre, based on the overall planning, design and engineering done by the Lukmire Partnership team of architects and engineers.]

The program requirement of covered access from the adjacent parking garage led to the exposed steel bridge running the length of the alley. Built in four sections, each with a separate canopy suspended from tubular steel columns, this bit of structural theatrics helps tame the exterior mass of the theater facade facing the residential building across the alley. This bridge also provides cover to the library patrons at street level arriving from the same garage.

[Signature Theatre floor plan The Lukmire Partnership, Inc. © 2007]

Art in the Service of Architecture

Owners often create self-inflicted delays. We first became aware that Arlington County had instituted an art in architecture program shortly before the project started into construction. Better late than never, and since when had decorative artwork impacted building construction? You can’t make this stuff up.

I served on the selection committee reviewing candidates. The County selected two artists, Martha Jackwon-Jarvis to design the small fountain and pool on the public plaza and Erwin Redl to create a ‘to be determined’ light piece, light as in LED lights.

Erwin Redl’s first idea was a net of LED lights hung on wire across the library ceiling to serve as the library’s sole light source. When I explained he’d need to find someone to calculate the actual light produced by what sounded like a cool idea, he moved on to Plan B, a column of blue LED lights running the height of the shaft on the building’s exterior. Titled “Flow” because the lights would flow upward, like to heaven. This was the same shaft soon to receive the aforementioned granite panels, the concrete was already standing proud, and the granite was coming shortly by rail car.

On the far side of the Library, applied against the cast-in-place concrete screen wall hiding the Trade Center, Redl wanted the same LED design repeated in a series of three.

The delay, were it to happen, would be the County’s to pay for, and the contractor was counting the days and smiling.

Placing the LED light art flush with the granite meant we’d need to interrupt the granite either side. We scrambled to reconfigure the granite and issue new drawings. Had we known a bit earlier about the artwork, we would have revised the concrete pylon to a steel frame and masonry infill on which to mount the granite. This would allow the lights to be accessed from the interior, and the exterior remain sealed to the weather. Only now the concrete already stood proud, all 75 feet of it.

I designed the piece myself because it involved the building’s facade, and would be there as long as the building remained standing. Because these were custom jewel cases, they were sole-sourced to be manufactured by Hope Windows, specialists in steel-framed glazing. Stainless steel and structural-glazed cases so the frames are largely invisible, each case eight feet tall and hung on continuous piano hinges, with the wiring in conduits just behind. I made access to the LED lights from the back side of each panel, once swung out from the wall; this way the weather seals are protected.

I considered telling the artist his design was impossible. In hindsight that would have been far less work, but at night, the blue ribbon is like a very cool, slow wave at the passersby.

Shirlington in the evening with Flow (2006) by Erwin Redl at right photo by Eric Taylor, © 2007 — Shirlington in the evening with *Flow* (2006) by Erwin Redl at right photo by Eric Taylor, © 2007

Rear library garden Flow (2006) by Erwin Redl   photo by Anice Hoachlander — Rear library garden *Flow* (2006) by Erwin Redl photo by Anice Hoachlander

Shirlington Plaza

The plaza in front was built separately by the developers. It holds the second art piece by Martha Jackson Jarvis. Downstream Flow is a much quieter piece–where she inset fractured stones in swirling patterns in the miniature fountain; the fountain sits just in front of the Library’s entrance. Nice to be on axis, not so nice as it’s in the way of people arriving at the front door.

The plaza itself is an object lesson in why design by committee (in this case the neighborhood committee) is seldom successful. If Michelangelo, on his back in the Sistine Chapel, was driven to distraction by his sole client, Julius II, imagine what a committee of college-educated and opinionated lay people might produce. I pitied the developer’s architect who sat through meeting after meeting while they pushed and pulled his design. It’s not a terribly handsome public space, but the street trees are growing.

The fountain works less than 10 percent of the time, and is shut down and empty more than it’s operating, so sadly Jackson Jarvis’s handwork is hardly ever noticed.

Signage

Signature Theatre is an evening affair, and the signage needed to be visible at night. Whereas the Library is largely a daytime function and already at grade level. So the two entrances have two different approaches to their signage. The Library employs a tradition borrowed from Art Moderne, freestanding letters on a stainless steel beam, hung just above the entrance. By contrast, Signature Theater’s signage (known in the trade as ‘shadow box’ lettering) runs the height of the second granite shaft. The orange-red color is from neon washing the rose-colored granite. The sample “S” sits proudly in our family room at home, back lighting a reddish brown brick wall. I found the perfect wall for found art.

Currently there are no live shows at Signature, so they’re struggling. But the starving artist isn’t a cliché for no reason. When we ever get back to normal, I’m hoping to see another of their performances. Hope the back story is interesting. I have a ton of photos to follow.