World’s greatest artistic landmarks inspired architect

All three concepts apply to the planned profile of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, aiming for beauty outside the building and inside the theaters, as well as up on the stages.

“This is a building that was inspired by the greatest centers and opera houses in the world,” says Myron Martin, president of the Smith Center. “The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, La Fenice in Venice, La Scala in Milan — this isn’t merely lip service. An area that brings people into a pedestrian alley was inspired by the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and the giant balcony in the upper lobby is inspired by (San Francisco’s) War Memorial Opera House.”

Those are impressive inspirations for a design intended to echo legendary centers while forging Las Vegas’ originality, an idea often derided as an oxymoron in a city famous for faux-duplications.

“Anything that already exists anywhere in the world already exists in Las Vegas,” says David Schwarz, architect on the Smith Center project, which will blend classical and modern architectural styles.

“So we started to look at Las Vegas’ roots and history, and the largest monument previous to this one is the Hoover Dam, which gives us our stylistic juice. It struck us that the casinos had not taken that imagery, and we’re doing it a different way. The dam was highly influenced by deco — not art deco but deco-ish — and it’s hard to pin an architectural style on it, which is useful to us. It’s hard to pin one on our building, too.”

The 4.75-acre center — characterized as “a living room for the community” — will be built at the corner of Bonneville Avenue and Grand Central Parkway, northeast of the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, and will rise from within downtown’s master-planned, 61-acre Union Park.

Originally conceived as a three-building configuration, it is, for now, down to two, after a decision to eliminate one of the theaters. But it probably will return to three if, as expected, a building is added to house a museum, joining an education center with two theaters and classroom facilities, and the complex centerpiece, a 2,050-seat, proscenium-style hall.

“In a town where we tear buildings down every 20 or 30 years, how do you build a building for generations? You have an architect who understands what a timeless, lasting, elegant building means,” Martin says of Schwarz and his “neo-eclectic” vision. “And in a town where we build things out of stucco and faux-finishes, he’s using giant blocks of stone for the exterior, just like those other great buildings.”

The structures will be linked by a courtyard and crowned by a carillon bell tower atop the main theater. Complementing the complex will be the two-acre Symphony Park, which will be flanked by The Smith Center to the south and a hotel named for celebrity chef Charlie Palmer to the north. The park will be separated by the pedestrian-oriented Union Park Promenade, lined with an array of retail, dining and shopping venues. Towering above it all in Union Park will be the ambitious, mixed-use World Jewelry Center, which will include an office building at least 50 stories high.

“Performing arts centers are landmarks at the time they’re built, but they frequently don’t last as those kinds of landmarks,” Schwarz says. “When you look at the buildings planned for around that neighborhood, they’re all incredibly tall, so there’s no way a concert hall can rival them. So we tried to come up with an architecture that would be landmark and make it unique in the neighborhood. It will make the performing arts center highly visible from most of downtown and the highways and a great many other places.”

The building exteriors were originally envisioned as using an earthy red, metaquartzite limestone. Instead, they now will be Indiana limestone, somewhere between “a gray and cream color,” Martin says about the material that has distinguished many famous structures, including the Pentagon, Empire State Building and the new, in-construction Yankee Stadium.

While most arts centers include sections that are relatively neglected aesthetically, Martin plans for a well-rounded look.

“The parkway side is typically blank walls, stucco that goes way up high, no animation, maybe some theater posters along the side, and normally it’s where the theater stops, at the edge of the building,” he says. “But we’re taking this entire side and doing interesting things.”

Schwarz says the interior will utilize a “horseshoe form” traditional for concert halls, “but expressed differently in different halls. I don’t think there’s anything about it you would mistake for being a hall other than ours.”

Among the “wow moments” in the main theater — which will be wheelchair-accessible and an estimated 120 feet long and 90 feet wide — Martin singles out the ornate ceiling.

“If you look at ceilings of theaters in Las Vegas, you usually see black,” he says.

“In this case, it will be a highly articulated, well-decorated, multidimensional ceiling with a beautiful light in the center. You have to see it to appreciate it.”

Above a main floor that will hold close to 50 percent of the seats — including mohair-covered orchestra-level seats — will be four balconies. The first tier will consist of a ring of about 20 boxes seating four to six patrons apiece in a Carnegie Hall-style design. It will be topped by two five-row balconies and an eight-row balcony.

“If you look around the world at theaters people love to go to, decade after decade, century after century, they all have a very compact footprint and are all very vertically organized,” says Joshua Dachs, the theater’s designer.

“The great Italian opera houses, like La Scala, have many layers of balconies. By stacking vertically, everybody gets much closer. If we made it with just one balcony, the room would be twice as long and patrons twice as far away, which would be damaging to the whole experience. But we’ve come up with a design that has a cozy, intimate feel.”

To create clear sightlines from every angle, Dachs says, he’s running computer software projecting three-dimensional views of the theater that enables him to sit, in a virtual sense, in every seat.

“If you can’t see, you’ll feel like you can’t hear, even if you can,” Dachs says.

Acoustically, the hall is being designed to optimize the needs of the Las Vegas Philharmonic, a co-tenant along with the Nevada Ballet Theatre.

“There are two things that are key to creating a great listening experience, particularly for symphonic music,” says the theater’s sound designer, Paul Scarbrough. “One is that the room be comparatively narrow so the width between the two side walls is relatively narrow. The second is there be enough cubic volume of air enclosed within the volume of the space to generate the proper sense of reverberation in the space.”

A bonus for the Philharmonic, he adds, will be an enclosure, or “shell,” that protects sound typically soaked up by scenery or draperies onstage. Without it, an aural imbalance causes some audience members to hear certain sections of the orchestra louder than others, contrary to how it’s actually being performed, and lets much of the sound escape backstage.

Another benefit of the shell is its effect on musician interaction.

“What’s so important is that musicians can hear themselves,” says Philharmonic conductor/music director David Itkin. “They can hear each other, feel like they can play by listening to and feeling music from across the ensemble, as opposed to not knowing what’s going on because they can’t hear.”

It might even help develop a musical signature.

“That helps create an identifiable orchestral sound,” says Peter Aaronson, the Philharmonic’s executive director. “We’re looking to develop the Las Vegas Philharmonic sound, very much like the famed Philadelphia Orchestra sound at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, or the Boston Symphony at Symphony Hall in Boston, to put us on the level with our big brothers and sisters.”

The acoustics system will also toggle between the Philharmonic’s requirements and those of amplified music and touring Broadway productions.

“We can make the room more controlled for amplified music so you still get the clarity and articulation,” Scarbrough says, “then reverse those changes at the touch of a button and bring in the shell for those rich, resonant acoustics.”

Dressing rooms for visiting artists also are being designed for increased comfort and sunnier aesthetics. Whereas most are traditionally windowless and stuffed in basements or immediately off the stage, those at the Smith Center will be set along the street, with glass allowing natural daylight to stream through.

“Our objective is to get and keep artists,” Martin says. “I want them to sign our guestbook saying, ‘This was a phenomenal experience,’ even if it’s a little thing like natural daylight for them that sets us apart.”

Tying outdoor attributes to indoor performance is even more prominent at the 300-seat cabaret theater in the educational center, where two sections of glass behind the stage will face out onto Symphony Park.

“Imagine watching Wynton Marsalis and the band and you’re seeing behind the glass to the park, the Charlie Palmer Hotel, the World Jewelry Market in the distance and the urban setting that surrounds it,” Martin says. “I can’t say this was our vision. We were totally inspired by Jazz at Lincoln Center, and I liked the idea of having the urban fabric tied into the performance. When the city lights up, it’s going to be a special place.”

The complex in all its proposed grandeur will be available to view in miniature at a preview center scheduled to open sometime this month at the Smith Center offices at the Holsum Design Center on West Charleston Boulevard. Four models will exhibit the exterior design, a downtown view of the Symphony Park neighborhood, a model looking out from the stage into the audience of the large hall, and another that cuts down the middle of the theater to expose the entire stage and the connecting lobby. An electronic model will provide a virtual walk-through from the outside to the inside of the Smith Center.

But for all the visual vibrancy, Martin says, the true beauty lies elsewhere.

“It’s more than being about architecture, more than being about the stones and the building. It’s about what happens inside.”

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.