New York, NY (March 25, 2024)—In the wake of the tragic events of 9/11, redevelopment plans for New York City’s World Trade Center site earmarked space to develop a performing arts center. Decades later, the new Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) opened in the fall of 2023, bringing that cultural vision to life.
The 138-foot-tall, cube-shaped building holds three venues inside—–the John E. Zuccotti Theater (seating up to 450 people and known during the design phase as theater A), the Mike Nichols Theater (seating up to 250, theater B), and the Doris Duke Theater (seating up to 99, theater C). Each room can be used independently or in combination with the others—and that kind of flexibility is indicative of the ideology found throughout PAC NYC, designed by the architecture firm REX in collaboration with executive architect Davis Brody Bond, theater consultants Charcoalblue, and acousticians Threshold Acoustics.
The venue hosts work across theater, dance, music, opera, film, and more, and needed an audio system that could not only accommodate such varied productions, but also different configurations of the rooms. The auditorium can transform into 10 different proportions that collectively adopt 64 stage-audience arrangements with capacities ranging from 90 to 950 seats, and with audience circulation and lobby areas varying to match.
In order to be able to accommodate such a variety of setups, Charcoalblue and PAC NYC developed a collection of equipment that can be repurposed in dozens of different configurations to suit different production needs. As a part of that, the speakers had to be able to be deployed in a variety of arrangements, such as traditional end-stage, in-the-round, and a host of other shapes.
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Charcoalblue Senior Consultant Josh Loar explained, “Our approach was centered on two basic ideas. First, we were to provide a stock set of configurations that act as a baseline for the venue; these are configurations that allow rental events or short-run events to select one of Perelman’s already-tuned configurations and run with it. The understanding here is not that these would always be the designs for any given configuration, but that these were baselines for times when a sound designer was not part of a touring company’s coterie of staff, or for when they are presenting musical events that don’t typically have a theatrical-style sound designer. And second, we wanted to incorporate Soundscape capabilities for full sound design flexibility in the venues.”
As d&b’s immersive audio solution, Soundscape was designed for quick deployment such as in touring applications, so the design team found it to be a good fit for a venue that would be radically changing layouts and deployments every few days.
Ultimately, Charcoalblue developed a point-source system driven by Y10P, Y-SUB, 8S, and 44S loudspeakers mounted in a wide range of configurations. Further, it specified V-Series arrays and point sources paired with V-SUBs for end-stage and other array configurations. “We also designed some expanded systems, where the Perelman elected not to purchase all recommended units, but to hold the designs as reference for rentals when needed,” said Loar.
The result is a system that has met the venue’s multifaceted needs. Micah Zucker, Lead Audio PAC NYC, noted, “During our opening season, we have switched configurations regularly and the flexibility Soundscape provides gives us the ability to pivot from one configuration to the next.”
