August 26, 2024

Diamond Schmitt’s new book Set Pieces: Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments is featured in an interview article by Angela Gismondi for ConstructConnect.

Set Pieces provides detailed designs, photos and illustrations of the firm’s architectural approach to designing performing arts venues in Canada and around the world, and Principal Don Schmitt spoke to ConstructConnect about why the team didn't want to produce a conventional architectural monograph.

“We’ve accumulated performing arts spaces as an architectural focus that was a considerable portfolio. We thought it would be interesting not to do a monograph saying look these are a dozen or 20 buildings, but to actually talk about the elements that are some of the interesting components of making a great performing arts centre and in a sense take the reader behind the scenes,” said Schmitt. “We thought by focusing on things like, how do you make a great ceiling? How do you make the walls perform acoustically? How do you make balcony fronts that facilitate the right sightlines? How do you make all of the elements that make up the building? We thought it would be an interesting lens to look at the project through that perspective of fragments or elements. Every audience member loves to go backstage to kind of see the mechanics and the mystery of what putting on a performance entails.”

Published by international architecture publisher Birkhäuser, the book features projects such as David Geffen Hall in New York; Ottawa’s National Arts Centre; the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences in Lubbock, Texas; La Maison Symphonique in Montreal; Mariinksy II Theatre in Saint Petersburg; Theater aan de Parade in Den Bosch, The Netherlands; Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto; Daniels Spectrum, Toronto; Memorial Hall in Marlborough, England; and the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto.

Read the full article on Construct Connect here.