Duane L Jones Recital Hall, SUNY Old Westbury

The Duane L. Jones Recital Hall is a major performance and presentation venue on the campus of SUNY College at Old Westbury. At 400 seats the renovated space provides a new home for campus events ranging from dance and theater performance to academic activities such as lectures and various ceremonies.

Designed in 1973, the Old Westbury Recital Hall was part of a brutalist academic “megastructure” that was intended to be the academic and administrative hub of the campus. The Recital Hall itself, as originally designed, was principally a concrete and sheetrock affair that more resembled a mini athletic arena than space for artistic performance. Its questionable aesthetics aside, the space was strangely asymmetrical, creating an out-of-kilter relationship between the audience and performers on stage. Poor acoustics and outdated stage technology also limited the space’s utility.

The brief was to redesign the hall to become the premier event space on campus. Without decreasing the seating count, the design reshaped the space inserting a curving wood wall that improved the focus of the venue towards the stage, reestablished, to the greatest degree possible, the room's symmetry, improved its acoustics to performance standards and created a warm, welcoming and aesthetically unique space within an otherwise severe institutional building. A new catwalk system, control booth and lighting system were also integrated into the design to provide flexible technical support for a wide range of uses.

As well as re-centering the space to create a stronger relationship between performer and audience, a moveable screen enhances the utility of the hall by allowing it to function both as a performance and academic space. The Recital Hall's presence is further announced by the extension of the design vocabulary into the building lobby.