Performing Arts
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County
+ expand detailMiami, Florida, USA
500,000 square feet / 46,000 square meters
2006
The Adrienne Arsht Center is the premier performing arts center in Florida and the second largest in the United States, after Lincoln Center. The Arsht Center consists of two main buildings — the Sanford and Delores Ziff Ballet Opera House and the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall — separated by an outdoor plaza. The Arsht Center is home to the Miami Ballet and the Florida Grand Opera and host to guest resident orchestras and traveling productions.
The Ballet Opera House and the Concert Hall are each composed of a series of stepped masses clad in light-colored Sardinian granite. The forms, a modern interpretation of ancient stone architecture, project a sense of both permanence and excitement. The buildings are punctuated by large glass and steel curtain walls at their entries, adding to their contemporary, crystalline expression.
The Parker and Vann Thomson Plaza for the Arts, which is bisected by Biscayne Boulevard, contains colonnades, cascading garden terraces, and a paving pattern based on Afro-Caribbean designs. The tower from a 1929 Sears store, the earliest example of Art Deco style in Miami, was preserved and incorporated into the Plaza design.
In addition to its 2,480-seat main stage, the Ballet Opera House includes a 200-seat studio theater for smaller productions. Over the audience in the main house is a dramatic acoustic dome — a 12-meter (40-foot) convex disc covered with sound-reflective bumps that bounce sound throughout the space. In the 2,200-seat Concert Hall, a spiraling acoustic canopy is suspended over the stage. Rings of custom light fixtures accent the flowing form.
In conjunction with the Miami-Dade Art in Public Places program, Pelli Clarke Pelli collaborated with five artists: José Bedia, Robert Rahway Zakananitch, Gary Moore, Anna Valentina Murch, and Cundo Bermudez. The artists created unique works that were incorporated into the architecture.
