1 credit towards the Certificate in Classical Architecture (Building Craft) | Submitted for AIA CES Approval
The open-air theater is one of the oldest and most durable building types in the Western tradition, gathering audience and performer together while anchoring the arts in public life. Drawing on that long history, the Orion in Huntsville, Alabama, creates a new 8,000-person venue amid a 40-acre park in MidCity, a mixed-use development on the site of a former suburban shopping mall.
In this session, David M. Schwarz Architects principal Josh Arcurio will trace the Orion’s design process, examining how the team used traditional architectural precedents to resolve the particular challenges and requirements of a contemporary outdoor performance venue. The presentation will cover the formal strategies that emerged from research into the development of outdoor performance spaces; the use of classical architectural elements as connective tissue between the ancient performance traditions and the space program for which it is named; and the design of surrounding interior and exterior spaces as civic infrastructure useful throughout the year, not simply as event support. It will also explain how the building was shaped by its catalytic role in Mayor Battle’s Music Initiative, a citywide effort to grow Huntsville’s music ecosystem and establish the city as a cultural destination.
Participants will come away with an understanding of how traditional architecture can serve a persuasive civic function in a contemporary context, and how placemaking at the scale of a large entertainment venue can meaningfully extend a facility’s public life beyond its performance calendar in a city’s broader civic ambition.
Josh Arcurio is a Principal and the Design Technology Administrator at David M. Schwarz Architects. His recent project experience has focused on transit-oriented, mixed-use planning and architecture projects; institutional, civic, and educational architecture; and feasibility studies and design for performance and music venues.
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