SPAC architects meet with residents for first design workshop

Bringing to life a design vision for the Sarasota Performing Arts Center takes a village. 

That was the message design team members conveyed during two open house sessions on Tuesday in the Grand Foyer of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.

For now that village comprises the assembling project team at Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa, Italy, the local architect of record, Sweet Sparkman of Sarasota, and the leadership of the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation and the city of Sarasota.

On Tuesday it grew to include attendees of Tuesday’s workshops and soon will expand to a global team of experts in engineering, acoustics, designers, modeling, lighting, simulation and more. 

“I know the title is ‘Ask the Architects,’ but it’s really more useful to hear your comments,” said Kerry Joyce of RPBW, the associate-in-charge of the SPAC project. He emphasized the collaborative approach the firm takes to design buildings that are harmonious with their location, approachable and accessible to all and, perhaps most important, sustainable and resilient against weather extremes.

The latter, they said, begins, quite literally, at the drawing board.

"In our mind, the most sustainable building is a building that doesn't need to be replaced after 20 or 50 years. It's a building that stands the test of time,” Joyce said. “It's a building that will last 200 or 300 years. So it's also something that you don't try to apply sustainability to afterwards.”

In addition to the workshops, Joyce and colleague Ronan Dunphy were in town for several days to meet with SPAF leaders along with Todd Sweet and Jerry Sparkman of Sweet Sparkman, research the site of the proposed facility in The Bay Park and explore local architecture. They returned to Italy on Wednesday to begin the process of crafting a design concept to present in September when another round of workshops is anticipated. 

That timeline is critical because the deadline for the city and the SPAF to enter into an implementation agreement is Nov. 30. The SPAC would be built on city-owned land within The Bay at the northeast corner of what is now a parking lot. Like The Bay itself, it is to be funded 50-50 between public dollars — almost all from the tax increment financing district surrounding the park — and philanthropy. 

“In September, we will have the initial design concepts, so we expect to have our architects return in September from Italy and present the initial concept designs to you,” said SPAF CEO Tania Castroverde Moskalenko. “Then in October and November, we will reveal final designs and also go to the city with an implementation agreement.”

At that time a more refined price for the project is expected to be revealed. The working estimate by the SPAF has been $275 million to $300 million, including the up to $36.9 million design agreement with RPBW. That pays for all aspects of the design right up to groundbreaking, and for the on-site architect services to ribbon cutting. 

During the workshop, Joyce and Dunphy highlighted projects in Los Angeles and in Europe that exemplify the firm’s approach to design in harmony with the local environment, outdoor space, shade and human scale. To address questions about resiliency, they described how local environmental factors are incorporated into initial design work resulting in sustainability.

The theater at the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum in Los Angeles, for example, was built above a “floating” foundation that allows the earth to move 30 inches while maintaining structural integrity.

Image courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop Architects

Another example is the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art in Istanbul, Turkey, which stands on the Bosphorus Strait connecting the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea.

“Another important fundamental aspect of our work is to create as much public space as possible,” Dunphy said. “In this case we raised the building on both ends and around the sides to create shade spaces, and we chose also to maintain the vista, not to block the sunset and the water from the city, but to frame the views.” 

The location of the SPAF in concert with The Bay Park, he added, is “a really rare opportunity for the city of Sarasota to have this wonderful site looking at that amazing (bay) and a future park that's going to make a new green lung inside the city.”

Under the supervision of RPBW partner-in-charge Mark Carroll, Joyce and Dunphy, along with Genoa-based colleagues will work alongside the Sweet Sparkman team from initial concept to final design to completion of construction. 

Image courtesy of Michel Denancé

Joyce said selecting a local firm as architect-of-record made the most sense given established relationships with the city, the community and stateside contractors.

“We are a consultant to Renzo Piano,” said Sweet. “They will be the design architect, but we will be working with them from the beginning all the way to the end to develop and conceive the project.”

Added Sparkman, “We love working with outside architects. They inspire us. They show us how to do things and we try to share with them how we do things together.”