+VG Architects, with a track record of successful theatres in Milton and Huntsville, Ont., was hired to design a new, 500-seat, 80,000-square-foot theatre, budgeted at $35-million, for Sheridan College?s Trafalgar Road campus in Oakville, Ont. Construction is expected to commence by 2020.
The new theatre will be a multipurpose hall with an orchestra pit and a tall fly tower, making it capable of hosting chamber music, dance, drama, musical theatre and orchestral performances as well as conference, film and lecture presentations.
The acoustics will be adjustable. Inside the audience chamber, curtains on the wall surfaces will render the room absorbent and acoustically ?dead? to make the sound die away quickly, which is essential for easy comprehension of speech. Or, the curtains will retract into pockets to make the room more reflective and provide the longer, ?live? reverberation time appropriate for concerts. There?s music offstage, too. ?The columns are not just structural elements,? says Yaser Rahmanian, associate partner, project manager and design development architect at the Brantford, Ont., office of +VG Architects. ?The locations of the columns, and the linear and spot lights in the ceiling, create a rhythm, a musical notation of lines and dots.? The design language of the lobby repeats on the spandrel glazing and aluminum fins running along the exterior.
The monumental-scale banner advertising the current or upcoming production on the side of the fly tower will be ...