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Frieze depicting "The Arts" from the front facade of Municipal Auditorium, downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
The Metropolitan Performing Arts Center
Downtown Kansas City , Missouri
The Metropolitan Performing Arts Center has been a labor of love
for Julia Irene Kauffman, a life-long supporter of the arts and one of Kansas City's great philanthropist. Through her efforts, The Kansas City metropolitan area will break ground on a world class performing arts center in the fall of 2006 with completion in 2008.
Sited on a dramatic hilltop, Moshe Safdie, internationally acclaimed architect, has oriented the Performing Arts Center to connect the traditional downtown of the city with the great outward spread of its metropolitan population. The forms themselves are musical allusions -- from the symbolic acoustical suggestions and mathematical precision of the domes to the soaring piano and stringed instrument reference of the steel-glass-and-cables lobby enclosure system.
The hall for musical concerts accommodates 1,600 persons in an ope, vineyard-seating format. Since it has none of the complex requirements of a theater, the building's dimensions and design are purely suited to one purpose alone; producing glorious music in a sublime setting of acoustical perfection.
The hall for opera, ballet and theater seats 1,800. Its larger dimensions are necessary to accommodate the staging, machinery, rehearsal spaces, offices, dressing rooms and the other backstage and wing requirements for putting on the most elaborate operas, musicals and ballets plus shows and theatrical presentations of every kind imaginable.
"Celebration Hall" is a smaller multiuse venue that accommodates 400 persons for a variety of purposes from more intimate artistic and entertainment performances of all kinds to banquets, parties, receptions, meetings, educational groups, guest speakers. It's a special place to celebrate all that the arts can be
The vast, virtually transparent lobby will commingle audiences from the different venues in a festive, vital atmosphere of shared communal activity, A radiant glow of sophisticated urbanity will beckon to all outside who are passing by or viewing from afar.
Because an entertainment experience begins when you leave home, parking is an integral part of the design. An ample garage is out of sight but directly linked to the Center above with easy drop-off and valet entrances, lush landscaping and an open ramp that pours light into the underground spaces.
More informaiton about Kansas City's Performing Arts Center can be found on their website at www.kcperformingartscenter.org
Special thanks to Metropolitan Kansas City Performing Arts Center, Inc. for contributing to this page.
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