Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet: H

 

The Hult Center for the Performing Arts (photo by Cacophony via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1692766)

 

This is the next in my Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet series of blog posts, the focus of each being a landmark building here in Eugene. Many of these will be familiar to most who live here but there are likely to be a few buildings that are less so. My selection criteria for each will be threefold: 

1. The building must be of architectural interest, local importance, or historically significant.
2. The building must be extant so you or I can visit it in person. 
3. Each building’s name will begin with a particular letter of the alphabet, and I must select one (and only one) for each of the twenty-six letters. This is easier said than done for some letters, whereas for other characters there is a surfeit of worthy candidates (so I’ll be discriminating and explain my choice in those instances). 

This week’s selection begins with the letter H, for which my choice is the Hult Center for the Performing Arts.

The Hult Center

The City of Eugene envisioned the Hult Center for the Performing Arts as part of a larger urban renewal development that also included a Hilton Hotel next door (now The Graduate hotel), a conference center, and a 515-car parking garage. Built using funds approved by voters in 1978, the cost of construction for the entire project was $51.8 million. In retrospect, this must have seemed a remarkably ambitious sum (in today’s dollars, more than $173 million) for what was then (and remains today) a relatively small community. In realizing the project, Eugene was punching well above its weight.  

Without question, the Hult Center has more than repaid Eugene’s investment. The Center provides a "home field" for its resident companies, which include the Eugene Ballet, Ballet Fantastique, the Eugene Concert Choir, and the Eugene Symphony. It comfortably accommodates more than 700 events each year, including shows from across the entire spectrum of the performing arts by world-class and locally grown talent, lectures by some of the leading thinkers of our time, high school graduation ceremonies, and more. These events draw visitors to downtown Eugene, contributing to the vibrancy of our city core. The economic spin-offs include the multiplier effects of entertainment spending, job creation, and expansion of the tax base. 

Less tangible but equally significant has been the Center’s role in boosting Eugene’s civic pride. The Hult Center thrives as the city’s premier performance venue (that is, when not necessarily limited by pandemic mandates). It consistently ranks among Eugene’s top-rated tourist attractions. Today, almost forty years since it first opened, the technical sophistication of its design continues to garner accolades from performers and audience-members alike, many of whom still regard it as “modern” and “state-of-the-art.”  

Unsurprisingly, the commission to design a major performance arts hub for Eugene attracted a who’s who of architects from around the country. Twenty-seven firms formally vied for the opportunity to design the Hult Center. Ultimately, the Eugene City Council approved selection of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA) (2), a New York firm that had by the late 1970s established a reputation for attention-grabbing and successful concert halls.(3) Lutes/Sanetel/Architects (the predecessor firm to my office, Robertson/Sherwood/Architects) served as the affiliated local firm for the project. HHPA’s architect responsible for construction contract administration was the late Jerry McDonnell, who eventually settled in Eugene with his family and founded Brockmeyer McDonnell Architects (now GMA Architects). 

During its heyday, architecture critics regarded the partnership of Hugh Hardy, Malcom Holzman, and Norman Pfeiffer as among the design vanguard that sought to enrich contemporary architecture through a more inclusive and eclectic architectural approach. For HHPA, this often translated to jarring juxtapositions of multiple styles in a single project. Paul Goldberger described the firm’s work as “rather brash, often irreverent, more a collage of interesting elements than a pure statement.” Indeed, the best of HHPA’s work exemplified this freewheeling mindset, often combining banal or kitschy elements in a pop art manner. The Hult Center is no exception, as HHPA playfully mixed allusions to neo-Baroque precedents in the 2,448-seat Silva Concert Hall with abstract references to Eugene’s silviculture and geography (the lobby) and the matter-of-fact industrial aesthetic of the intimate, 496-seat Soreng Theater. 

Lobby (this and the following two images from the Hult Center website) 

It’s hard to adequately describe one’s feelings upon entering the Silva Concert Hall for the first time (as I did during a behind-the-scenes construction tour as the facility’s completion neared in 1982). It is a truly remarkable space, at once reminiscent of a 19th century opera house and yet shockingly original. The hall’s tour de force is its ceiling, which looks like nothing if not an inverted peach basket of Brobdingnagian proportions. The ceiling consists of dozens of convex arcs with plaster centers and wire mesh borders that either absorb or reflect sound depending upon their position within the hall. The panels were the handiwork of the Benny Bartel Company; Benny's son and my good friend Gary Bartel served as the project manager, overseeing their execution. According to Gary, though many of the panels may appear to be of equal size and shape, each one proved to be unique, with laborious adjustments required in the field to facilitate their fitting and installation.  

The Silva Concert Hall 

The Soreng Theater

Another aspect of the Hult Center that has always been a source of delight are the many works of art the City commissioned for the project. Though not truly integrated with the architecture, the pieces (many crafted by Eugene-area artists) are invariably inspired, whimsical, and often only found serendipitously. Their contribution to the experience of attending an event in the facility is not inconsiderable. 

Hult Center viewed from Sixth Avenue (Google Street View)

When confronted by tight budgets, HHPA often resorted to concentrating resources on the auditoriums and other principal interiors, relegating the buildings’ exteriors to the status of “dumb” containers. Though strategic and understandable, in the instance of the Hult Center this choice—compounded by the need to acoustically isolate the performance halls from noise outside—largely resulted in the building resembling a concrete bunker. This is even true on the building’s primary entrance side, which additionally suffers the indignity of being depressed in elevation relative to the adjoining public sidewalk along Sixth Avenue and isolated from it by a moat of a drop-off lane. The net effect is an impoverished streetscape in the immediate vicinity of the building; not exactly what urbanists imagine for a cultural magnet in the heart of the city.

Despite its shortcomings as a work of urban design, the Hult Center for the Performing Arts is very much a landmark building by virtue of its function and importance to the community. It is likely to remain a focal point of Eugene’s mainstream cultural scene for many, many years to come.       

(1)  HHPA disbanded in August 2004; each of the partners subsequently established his own successor firm.

(2)  Two earlier HHPA projects—Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (1974) and the Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver (1978)—are among the Hult Center’s clearest progenitors. Like the Hult Center, both projects enclose superb auditorium spaces within unremarkable containers, relying upon illumination of activities and color within at night for animation.