A rendering of the Claire Tow Theater

As desecrations go, the nearly completed Lincoln Center Theater 3, which sits atop the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, is turning out rather well. The last time we looked at it, nearly two years ago, it was merely a promise. Now that promise is nearing fulfillment.

Designed by Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (who helped with the Vivian Beaumont design in years past), it rises over the austerely modernist pile that was conceived by Eero Saarinen (primarily) in 1965. The overhaul is scheduled for completion in March of next year, at a cost of $41 million.

In the recent renovations to the Lincoln Center campus, no area has been disrupted more often or more fundamentally than the spaces around the Vivian Beaumont. The plaza, a cool exercise in pure geometry has seen its fountain, inhabited by a Henry Moore sculpture, thoroughly subverted and reconceived, while a curving earthwork has been shoe-horned into the narrow space immediately to the north. As a result of these modifications, the space is surely more lively and popular with the general public, but the purity of its modernist ideas has been dealt a serious blow. [more]

A rendering of the new theater (Source: H3 Hardy Collaboration)

For those of you who worry about the potential desecration of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, in the form of Hugh Hardy’s newly announced black box venue that is scheduled to take up residence on the landmark’s roof, I can offer this consolation: the work that has already been done on the Beaumont’s plaza and surroundings, according to designs by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has wrought such a change upon the place that the new addition should make little difference.

We will not know until next fall, apparently, the success of that work, which includes, among other alterations, the creation of a huge grassy mound for sunbathing and a new restaurant along the sides of the reflecting pool that continues to hold Henry Moore’s titanic “Reclining Figure.”

What we can say is that the feel of the place will be — indeed already is — vastly different from what it was. The spare, almost minimalist, geometry of the post and lintel theater, the perfectly square reflecting pool, and the surrounding grounds, together with the way they all responded to the striated side of the Metropolitan Opera, provide one of the most muscularly modernist experiences in New York City. [more]