Dallas Breaks Ground on New “Vertical” Theater

The City of Dallas recently broke ground on the Center for the Performing Arts Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, an 80,300-square-foot multiform theater facility. The Wyly Theatre is co-designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture OMA and Joshua Prince-Ramus of Ramus-Ella Architects and is being built by McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. The 12-level, 600-seat theater—composed of cast-in-place-concrete and steel frame and clad in aluminum—features an inventive "stacked," vertically organized facility that allows rapid change of the stage configuration to a wide variety of configurations, including proscenium, thrust, and flat-floor. The main performance chamber sits at ground level, and support spaces are above- and below-house. Also included within the facility are a cocktail bar, rehearsal spaces, administrative offices, costume shop, lobby, stage support areas, mechanical rooms, production spaces, and rooftop multipurpose space. (Photo © Auralab, courtesy of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.)