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]

Nothing in Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s overhaul of the Lincoln Center campus has stirred more debate or more raw emotion than its redesign of the iconic fountain that stands at the center of the Josie Robertson Plaza (see image after the jump). Framed by Philip Johnson’s David H. Koch Theater, Max Abramowitz’s Avery Fisher Hall, and Wallace K. Harrison’s Metropolitan Opera, it has been a meeting point for cultured New Yorkers for nearly half a century and has figured prominently in movies like “The Producers,” “Moonlighting” and “Ghostbusters.” New Yorkers can find some solace then, in the knowledge that however the rest of the campus turns out, the fountain has been altered for the better. Though the entirety of the Josie Robertson Plaza, which Philip Johnson designed in imitation of the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, is a triumph of urban planning, the central fountain, which he also designed, was always a bit clumsy. Johnson was so impressed with himself for using the classicizing material of granite that it never occurred to him to use it with subtlety. Instead, he conceived the fountain as a thick slab clumsily supported by a stolid drum. [more]