Profile

Ferguson Center for the Arts,
Christopher Newport University

Newport News, Virginia
Completed 2005

Performing Arts Center
 

This project involves the renovation of a former high school gymnasium together with new construction in the creation of a performing arts center at the southern end of Christopher Newport University. Undertaken to expand and enrich the school's well-respected music and theater programs, the project also aims to provide an important new performance venue for the greater Virginia peninsula.

The complex includes a new 1,750-seat proscenium theater equipped with fine acoustics and advanced technical capabilities to accommodate symphony and opera, as well as dance, musical theater and various assemblies. The adjoining former gymnasium, largely concealed by new construction, houses a 500-seat Music and Theater Hall (a highly flexible space with variable platform stage and seating) and an intimate 200-seat Studio Theater (with side galleries in the manner of English courtyard theaters). Both of these performance spaces have been designed to accommodate a broad range of university and community uses. 

Critical to the design is a sweeping colonnade that connects all three theaters and a new parking facility and restaurant. Underlying the whole is a connective strategy to link the disparate components, new and old, in a way that gives coherence and focus to the developing 100-acre campus. It shapes inviting gathering spaces and helps to engender a sense of community within the university while simultaneously creating a dynamic entry sequence and distinctive identity appropriate for a leading regional center of the arts.

Major Components

New construction
1750-seat state-of-the-art Performance Hall with full orchestra pit, fly tower and generous backstage support; restaurant; above-ground parking structure for 800 cars; pedestrian colonnade and entry plazas

In existing structure
500-seat Music and Theater Hall with flexible seating configured to accommodate different audience/performer relationships; 200-seat Studio Theater with telescoping seating platforms and flexible platform that allows modification as a proscenium-, thrust- or center stage; extensive support; facilities for music, theater and fine arts departments

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners services

Full Architectural Services through design development; partial design services through working drawings

Associate Architect

Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas + Company, Norfolk, VA

Acoustical

Kirkegaard & Associates, Chicago, IL

Theater

Theatre Projects Consultants, South Norwalk, CT

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