The Onion once ran a
story about a Minneapolis architect's design for a house in which every room was a foyer. Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis has had the opposite problem since its construction: not enough lobby space.
When it was built in 1974, funds were lavished on an acoustically excellent performance
space but a more miserly approach was taken toward the public lobby and
backstage areas.
The performance hall can hold 2,450 people but the lobby is meant to hold only 800. That leaves packed patrons with a choice at intermission, according to orchestra spokesperson Gwen Pappas: "Either to go to the restroom or to get a beverage. In 20 minutes, you certainly couldn't do both."
A
design by KPMB Architects of Toronto was
unveiled last month for a $38 million renovation to correct the imbalance, to be completed by 2013.
The square footage of lobby space afforded each patron will double. People in wheelchairs will come and go more easily; currently stairs are scattered throughout the lobby, remnants of the era before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
KPMB plans to raise the entire main lobby floor, now sunken, to street level, improving people-watching both into and out of the hall. New windows will also provide wider city views now blocked by huge blue tubes along the 11th Street exterior.
The biggest opportunity for intermission elbow-room comes with a lobby bump-out onto orchestra-owned land adjoining the Peavey Plaza public park, where sliding panels will encourage mingling among patrons and parkgoers, Pappas says.
Source: Gwen Pappas, Minnesota Orchestra
Writer: Chris Steller