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Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center, University of Missouri — St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri
Completed 2003

State-of-the-art performance spaces with administration and support
 

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This project is the defining first component of a master plan to create a nationally significant arts complex at the St. Louis campus of the University of Missouri. In realization of this goal the university requested a landmark building that would convey artistic excellence, drawing the greater arts community to the campus and providing students with ready access to world-class traveling performances.

The state-of-the-art building fills a regional need for a medium-sized multi-use performance hall to supplement the large opera house and small performance spaces that currently sustain metropolitan St. Louis. The 1650-seat auditorium has been designed to accommodate opera, symphony, theater and dance performances, as well as lectures, convocations and other assemblies. Technically, it will compare in quality with the top venues in the country. The building also houses a 300-seat flexible music and theater hall, meeting and reception rooms, and public lobbies for banqueting, lectures, and other gatherings.

The solid volume of the central performance hall is enveloped by the curved glass walls of the airy public lobbies, filled with light throughout the day. At night, the building is visible across the campus, glowing amid the hundred-year-old trees preserved on the former golf course site. Generous plazas and terraces permit lobby activities to continue outdoors, and invite student body participation. The complex provides a circulation link between two future quadrangles so that the building and its public spaces will become an integral part of the daily campus experience.

Major Components

1650-seat multi-purpose proscenium theater; 300-seat flexible music and theater hall; 5,000 s/f reception and meeting rooms; 14,000 s/f glazed public lobbies; 30,000 s/f administrative and support spaces; 2 acres of landscaped outdoor spaces

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners services

Full architectural design and project coordination through design development; coordination with associate architect on construction documents and construction administration

Executive Architect

The Farnsworth Group, St. Louis, MO

Structural

Heideman & Associates, St. Louis, MO

Acoustical

Kirkegaard Associates, Chicago, IL

Theater

Theatre Projects Consultants, Ridgefield, CT

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