The design for the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center reflects a series of overlapping influences: the sloping site and its relationship to the campus, the Spokane River, and the city, itself. The overall design draws inspiration from the historic river architecture and natural landscape, which serve as a metaphor for its exterior and interior development. This includes Spokane’s history of development along the river, its dramatic rock falls, the beautiful natural landscape of eastern Washington, and the influence of water in the natural topography.
The facility, which includes a fully rigged fly tower, is set into a sloped site, mitigating its mass so as not to overpower the nearby iconic steeples of Saint Aloysius Church or the Jundt Art Museum opposite. The site was deemed to offer the most potential for the new Performing Arts Center, as well as for future campus development, including long-range expansion potential for an arts precinct. The site placement offers excellent access to service, provides a major arrival point, and establishes a new front door to the University’s western edge.
The programming requirements were a new performing arts center with two public venues to accommodate theatre arts, musical pedagogy, performance and dance recitals, and to foster campus-wide, interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts. Also required was the inclusion of a recreation of the living room, dining room and foyer of the chief benefactor, Myrtle Woldson, a leading Spokane businesswoman and supporter of the arts.
The 750-seat multipurpose proscenium theater provides professional-level quality and scale of drapery, scrims, LED lighting system and a fully rigged fly tower to provide a real-life experience for students in theater, music and dance production and performance, unusual for a campus of this size. The 160-seat rehearsal/recital hall provides an equal level of experience, with scrims, drapes, monitors, variable acoustics, lighting set-ups and a recording studio. Retractable seating supports performance and classes. The Design Studio Arts Lab, designed as a space for collaboration, is part hang-out, part lab, encouraging students to step out of their current disciplines and explore the connections to science or mathematics and find inspiration from wider sources.
The new Center respects the history of the campus architecture, with its predominance of red brick, by refining its use in a more contemporary way. The exterior walls of are red brick with radiating patterns of textured brick created by utilizing the broken face on the back side of the brick. The major portals into the building are made of copper colored metals, while shaped metal panels fill in the areas between the brick frames. Glass curtain walls reveal a Center alive with activities, visible from all parts of campus, allowing people to see and be seen during nights of performance, while providing a new place for students and faculty to collaborate. An exterior balcony off the second level adds to the experience and creates further opportunity for special events.