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Guthrie releases new design; will push for money at Legislature
by Marianne Combs, Minnesota Public Radio
January 30, 2003

A view from the street (Photo courtesy of Jean Nouvel Studio)

The Guthrie Theater has released what it says are the final designs for a new theater complex on the riverfront in downtown Minneapolis. The size and shape of the planned building remain almost entirely the same. The most startling change is the building's color.

St. Paul, Minn. — Architecture Magazine editor Camille LeFevre remembers when she saw Jean Nouvel's original designs last February. She was excited by French architect Jean Nouvel's innovation and creativity. He incorporated the shapes of neighboring flour mills with the history of a famous theater to create a bold new building. Her initial reaction to the revised design was much different. "The theater had taken on this dark blue color, which in the very bad photographs or computer-generated drawings I saw, my initial reaction to the new version of the building was, Wow! This is very stealth; it's very Darth Vaderesque in some sort of way," LeFevre said.

LeFevre says while at first she was startled, the more she sat and looked at the images, the more she liked them. She says the change in color is yet another bold move by Jean Nouvel.

	River view

Architect Thomas DeAngelo, who's working with Nouvel and the Guthrie on the new building, agrees. "Probably the biggest change relates to how the general public perceives the building from the outside."

Sitting in front of a laptop computer in a conference room just a few hundred feet from the current Guthrie Theater, DeAngelo flips through computer-generated images of the new design. DeAngelo says the most recent changes are truer to the original idea of the building; they just needed more time to develop. He says architect Jean Nouvel has created an exterior to the theater which better reflects the dramatic performances held within.

"He's really focused on the time of day -- twilight -- the sun goes down, when the lights of the building come up the theater starts to come alive and so the building with it's dark blue color tends to fade into the night and there are a series of images that begin to appear on the exterior of the building as sort of ghostlike images of the history of the Guthrie," according to DeAngelo.

DeAngelo says the oversized silk-screened images of past performances would glow white on the skin of the building. As the theater disappears into the darkness of the night, he says the ghostlike apparitions would appear to float over the river. Some people complained the original building looked too industrial. DeAngelo says the new exterior should fix this.

"I often say that architecture often goes through an ugly duckling phase. And I think it's been through that now and it's had a chance to grow a little bit and be refined and I think it's much better," he says.

Editor of Minnesota Architecture, Camille LeFevre, says she thinks this is the most exciting architectural project underway in the Twin Cities.

	Street view at night

"I think the building is really spirited in a way; it's really playful and adventurous and it strikes me as accessible as well, which I think a lot of contemporary architecture isn't," according to LeFevre.

The Guthrie Theater Company, along with Architectural Alliance is presenting the final design to new members of the state Legislature in an effort generate support for $35 million in bonding money. If the state funds the project, the Guthrie could begin construction on the new theater complex as early as this summer.

Artistic Director Joe Dowling has said if the money does not come through, the project will have to be dropped.

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