Bard College Performing Arts Center, New York

摘要

The strange, the sublime, the familiar, and the banal come together in a compelling and provocative manner in Frank Gehry's recently completed Richard B. Fisher Center for Performing Arts at Bard College. Located in Annandale-on-the-Hudson, the center is nestled in a bucolic setting on the northern edge of Bard's campus, some 90 miles from New York City. The complex of two buildings―where the main auditorium and a second theater are enclosed by the bold, sculptural contours of the stainless-steel cladding over a base primarily of poured-in-place concrete―is simultaneously monumental and picturesque. The evanescently undulating forms of the shiny carapace are by now familiar to many, especially after the resounding reception given Gehry's titanium-wrapped Guggenheim Bilbao [RECORD, October 1997, page 74]. But Bard boldly displays a "Queen Anne front" and a "Mary Ann behind," to borrow a phrase from a song by the late architect and composer Robert Schmertz.