The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) is on a 12-acre site in Newark, across from Military Park, between the downtown office buildings and the Passaic River waterfront. Barton Myers of Los Angeles, who designed NJPAC, envisioned the site becoming “a link among the cultural institutions, some of the magnificent downtown office buildings,” and the buildings near Penn Station. To achieve this effect, he explained, “we massed the complex so that each of the major spaces would read separately at street level, as if this were a cluster of buildings rather than one big compound.”
Myers also stressed the goal of making NJPAC an inviting place for a variety of people. To create a welcoming environment, he used many glass curtain walls to make the building as transparent as possible. He also “used materials that responded to the context of Newark’s brick architecture, but also to the steel you see in the industrial city.”
Our photograph demonstrates the importance of light in conjunction with glass, as well as the use of brick and steel. By taking both people and the varied existing architecture of Newark into consideration, Myers made a significant contribution to the city.
Nelson Hernandez, Margaret Odumewu, Ronny Preciado and Ingrid Caceres photographed NJPAC in a class at Rutgers-Newark with Nick Kline. Posted January 2006.
