Ambassador Award (tie

Ambassador Award and Award of Excellence

Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences

Entuitive

The Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences is a new venue in Lubbock, Texas, with two theatres, a multi-purpose room, a ballet studio and a bistro. Collaborating with the Lubbock Entertainment and Performing Arts Association (LEPAA), Entuitive’s structural engineers designed the building’s 2,297-seat Christine DeVitt main theatre and the main lobby, which features a monumental stair.

A cultural cornerstone The roots of the project go back to 2011, when a group of citizens identified the need for a new performing arts space. This led to the formation of LEPAA to raise private funds to design and construct the US$158-million project and then to own and operate it.

The building brought together the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Lubbock, touring productions and the Lubbock Independent School District (LISD) to provide student access.

Shaped for success The theatre features an audience chamber with a large main level and three horseshoe-shaped balconies to enhance proximity to the stage. Steel rakers cantilever up to 10 m from columns behind the theatre’s back wall to allow unobstructed views.

Vibration on the balconies was a major consideration, given the cantilever length of the rakers. To ensure audience comfort, Entuitive used the horseshoe shape to its advantage by adding a steel tension ring member near the front of the balcony.

The shape of the balconies required bending each of the steel members for the risers to follow the curvature of the space. On the lower balconies, standard beam sections were used for the risers, but on the uppermost balcony, the height of the risers meant they were not practical. An innovative custom steel ‘Z’ profile was created— not only curved, but also varied in height to follow the profile of the seating—by bending angles for the top and bottom of the profile, then welding on a variable-height steel plate for the web.

In the three-storey main lobby, the most striking element is the monumental stair, which is more than 17 m tall and uses 130 tonnes of steel. The thin outer edge and glass guard contrast with the solid white plastered central spine, which supports stair treads that cantilever up to 4.2 m. To form the helical shape, the steel was flexed in two directions through induction bending.

The long spans and slender profile were particularly vulnerable to vibrations from human activity. After finite element modelling and analysis, a tuned mass damper (TMD) was added on the second and third flights.

The seen and the unseen To keep the lobby space column-free, a 41-tonne truss, spanning more than 45 m,

was introduced. Hangers extend down from the truss to support alternating bands of windows and cladding, plus a sloping roof that pushes out from the line. This roof is supported by columns along the curtain wall below, before cantilevering past to provide a sunshade to the curtain wall.

Round, slender, architecturally exposed structural steel hangers emerge indoors from below the sloping roof and extend down to support one end of custom tapered steel plate girders at Level 2. These girders cantilever out 7.6 m to create the main entrance canopy.

Targeting LEED Silver certification, the hall’s façade counters temperature fluctuations and significantly reduces cooling loads. Glass fibre-reinforced concrete fins contribute to shading the large expanse of curtain wall.

One of the challenges for Entuitive was how to support undulating fins that are 1.5 m off the wall while giving them the appearance of floating. The solution was to fit a slender steel element within their profile, with sufficient strength to support the fin weight and stiffness to prevent wind-induced fluttering.

Many steel sizes and profiles (e.g. circular and rectangular) were considered, but would not fit within the sleek architectural profile. Oval steel sections were chosen as the optimal shape for minimizing the visibility of the supporting steel, providing the required strength and maintaining the architectural profile.

The elements are supported by the sloping roof overhang above and vary in profile over their height, with three sections spliced together: a larger oval inside the fin and a smaller oval above and below it. The height of each architectural fin varies, so no two supporting steel elements are the same.

The facility opened in January 2021.

Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, Lubbock, Texas Award-winning firm (structural engineer): Entuitive, Toronto. (Barry Charnish, P.Eng.; Tom Greenough, P.Eng.; Laura Young, P.Eng.; Matt Smith, P.Eng.; Sean Smith, P.Eng., PE; Ian Trudeau, C.Tech; Raj Thavarajah, Dipl. Arch. Tech.). Owner: Lubbock Entertainment and Performing Arts Association. Other key players: Garfield Public/Private (developer), Diamond Schmitt (design architect), Parkhill (architect of record and civil engineer), MWM Architects (associate architect), Crossey Engineering (mechanical, electrical and plumbing), Jaffe Holden Acoustics (acoustics), Schuler Shook (theatre planner and consultant), Lee Lewis Construction (general contractor), Basden Steel (structural steel fabricator), Beck Steel (monumental stair fabricator).

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