..J W
..,
~
W
..J ..J
<t
:E en <t
Above: The main features of the 1,040-seat NCP A theater are a rotatable stage and a fan-shaped design, which brings the last rows closer to the performance. The special acoustic design by a leading acoustician, Cyril. Harris, has eliminated the need for sound amplification. Above, left: A view of the entrance to the foyer. The simple Kota stone flooring is offset by the chandelier and the NataraJ. Left: Skyscrapers surrounding the NCPA campus, as seen from the auditorium. The picture at far left shows Marine Drive, also known as Queen's Necklace, with the NCP A theater in the foreground. Built upon a plot of land that juts into the sea at Nariman Point, the sleek structure contrasts with the taller buildings around.
A nine-day-long festival of music, dance and drama marked the opening of the Tata Theatre. The programs included a shehnai recital by Bismillah Khan, dance performances by Birju Maharaj and Yamin; Krishnamurthi, a vocal concert by M.S. Subbulakshmi, a Marathi version of Kalidasa' splay Shakuntalam (top) and a festival of country
music called "Southern Music USA." At left, above, is Cheryl White, a member of the American music group. Above: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, escorted by NCP A's vice-president Jamshed Bhabha, is greeted by Ambassador Robert Goheen and his wife as she arrives to inaugurate the hall. At extreme left is acoustician Cyril Harris.
u.s.
by NICHOLAS C. CHRISS
small jewel ... a meeting of the minds of the East and the West." That's how American architect Philip Johnson describes his first Indian assignment: the auditorium of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Bombay. The recently inaugurated auditorium has been hailed for its successful merger of aesthetic and functional considerations, a task that Johnson has accomplished with remarkable ease considering that he was a stranger both to India and its culture. "Indian music," as Johnson pointed out in a recent interview, "calls for a close aUdience-performer relationship with a lively give and take-something we Westerners don't understand. It calls for a special kind of theater." And that was what the National Centre for the Performing Arts wanted Johnson to create. "This was to be an intimate theater for about 1,000 people." And yet it was no small venture; the commissioning of Philip Johnson was proof of that. Though relatively unknown in India, Philip Cortelyou Johnson's regarded as one of the United States' most distinguished architects-and also "American architecture's number-one enfant terrible," thanks to the outrageous statements he delights in making. But his can be a benign influence too. To quote New York magazine: "In the eastern United States, most of the important architecture critics, most of the deans of school of architecture, and most of the promising up and coming new practitioners are indebted to Philip Johnson in one way or another." And, of course, there are the awards, topped by the prestigious gold medal of the American Institute of Architects (AlA), which was bestowed on Johnson in 1978.The medal put him in the ranks of previous winners like Frank Lloyd Wright Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Louis Sullivan and Eliel and E~ro Saarinen. Philip Johnson's buildings taken as a whole body of work defy categorization. He has been modern, innovative and often reinterpretative of neoclassical themes. While his modernity can be as conventional as a cigar-box skyscraper, he can also be vividly different, creating controversy and, often, ire with unconventional designs.
A
In the 1940s he shocked fellow architects, critics and neighbors when he designed and built a glass house for himself. "I still live in it, but I wouldn't build a glass house again," he says, to illustrate his belief in the importance of moving with the times. "There's a whole new concept abroad now, new thoughts, new designs. The younger people are leading the way these days against the old established architects who do those old-fashioned flat tops. And I've reacted to them. I guess I am sort of considered by them to be a precursor to their postmodern world." This constant reaction to-or development of-new trends has always been typical of Johnson. His career is marked by repeated shifts. Heir to an Alcoa stock fortune, he graduated from Harvard in 1930 having studied, not architecture, but Greek and philosophy. An introduction to architecture historian Henry Russel Hitchcock and, through him, to the work of Mies and Le Corbusier in Europe led him, at the age of 34 in 1940, to return to Harvard to study architecture. For years he was the greatest Miesean of them all, standing in the shadow of the Master. During this phase he designed more than a dozen museums in the United States and outside. Eventually, though, he broke away and established his own reputation. One of the best examples of his ever-changing compass is in Houston-the two-trapezoid towers of the Pennzoil Place that shoot up in the air just three meters apart and are anchored with a huge glass atrium. Though the NCPA auditorium has no relation, in the physical sense, to any other building that Johnson has done, the basic concept of intimacy is not new to him. The closeness of the audience to the performer is what he has always based his own theater designs on, even for his largest theater, at the Lincoln Center in NewYork.lt was thistheaterwhich impressed NCPA's Jamshed Bhabha while he was traveling around the world in search of the perfect architect for the ambitious auditorium.
CYRIL HARRIS TALKS ABOUT ACOUSTICS' The 1,040-seat NCP A auditorium is so designed as to allow echo less sounds to reach the entire audience without the aid of an amplification system. In the following interview with Kumud Mehta, American acoustic consultant Cyril Harris explains how this feat has been accomplished. Kumud Mehta: Does an architectural design influence the acoustics or vice versa? Cyril Harris: Actually, you can't do an architectural design without acoustic considerations. The shape, volume, boundaries and materials of the hall are decided by the acoustics. If you are going to have a concert hall for Western music, for symphonic music, I would insist on a rectangular shape. For an opera house I would use a different shape. In addition, the outer boundaries of the hall-what's on the wall, what
shape the ceiling has -are all determined by the acoustics. This means that, to quite an extent, the architect is restricted. There are various architectural solutions that can be made and the hard part is to find a solution which will please the Cyril Harris architect and please the acoustician. Mehta: What solution did you find in the case of the NCPA hall? Harris: Here the acoustical design was based on the fact that the hall was primarily for Indian traditional music. When I first visited India and attended concerts with Dr. Narayana Menon, I realized how important was the visual contact with the performer. This means that the Western shape simply can't work; it puts too many of the people far away. The shape that we now have here brings the audience much closer. And the
performer can see their expressions-which is important. Intimacy is a very difficult thing to achieve. For a I ,ODD-seat auditorium, I have the feeling that this is a very intimate theater. You don't believe that there are that many seats there. The acoustical design was also influenced by another fact: I realized that it was important t.o have lower reverberation time than we would have for many kinds of Western performances of equal size. We also decided to do without a proscenium because unlike the trumpet and other Western music instruments, which have a lot of power, most Indian instruments have a delicate sound, and you can't afford to throw away' any of it. With a proscenium, as much sound goes in the space behind it as in front, and all of it is lost. So instead of the proscenium, here we have a thrust ~tage, which comes into the auditorium and is sealed away, almost like a reflecting surface. So all that sound which would otherwise be lost is now going forward to the audience without any hindrance. The shape of the stage
Âť
en
3:
Âť r-
rem ~
m
r-
...I W
3= w
.., .J .J
<C
:E
en <C
"At Lincoln we designed almost a half circle to enable a greater number of people to get closer to the stage as against a movie hall kind of theater where the seats go too far back and you lose any great connection with the live performance. "We transferred this idea to Bombay-of course with modifications. One of my aims," says Johnson, "is to fit a new design to the requirements of public interest." The challenge at Bombaywas greater because not only was the place and its requirements new, but as with any innovative project, there was a constant evolution of ideas. "As the auditorium developed, there were different pressures from local theater groups, the NCPA and others." The NCPA auditorium is a joint venture. The Maharashtra Government gave the land and the finances came from a host of private firms, with the Tata group of companies supplying over 50 percent. "When NCPA decided to make it a more flexible theater, we changed our plans. The stage now revolves so that different kinds of plays can be put on. But it is still an intimate theater; the delicate instruments of Indian music can be perfectly heard by anyone sitting anywhere in the hall." "We had Cyril Harris of Columbia University, one of the leading acousticians in the world, work on the acoustics. He visited Bombay several times." To Johnson's knowledge of architecture and Harris' acoustic genius was added Indian informed advice .."We found everyone extremely cooperative. They wanted the best available Western technology. Narayana Menon, NCPA's director and a great expert on Western as well as Indian music, was our guru. "But, still, I'm a Westerner! All I could do was filter Menon's expertise through our knowledge of structure and distance and Cyril's acoustics. For example, we placed our ceilings low to let the audience in the back seats hear the small instruments as well as those sitting in the front seats could. OUf aim was to make it a pleasure to be in the room while listening to the music." But while keeping the needs of music in mind-and the NCPA was planned especially for small instruments and small groups-
Johnson had to also consider other functions that the auditorium would be called upon to perform. The NCPA auditorium is now equipped to put on plays, dances and a variety of other entertainment. And while picking up the nuances of Indian music became an important part of Johnson's assignment, "we had to make the theater flexible enough to accommodate other kinds of musicone requirement that surfaced was that Western chamber orchestras might play here in addition to Indian musicians." Flexibility was also essential for the size of the stage. "Though the revolving stage is small, you can build over the first seats an9 make it larger. In fact," continues Johnson, "you can use the whole auditorium for a stage if you want to set it up that way." If the design of the auditorium found Johnson at his innovative best, other elements of the assignment offered exciting opportunities to the derivative architect in him. To quote New York: "(Johnson) is often derivative in the best sense of the term ... he almost always draws upon early as well as recent precedents and elaborates on them with spectacular polish." For the main material of the building Johnson chose a local "most beautiful" stone, Malad. "It's been used for centuries. It's yellowish brownish, a very warm glowing stone, and the Indian workmen have fitted it extremely well. It's a craft they haven't lost. The stone is combined with a great deal of concrete, which, of course, is now everywhere." "In a sense," Johnson continued, "it's a combination of the latest technology and the oldest stone techniq ues." In talking of the colors and decorations used, Johnson was at a loss for words. "It's impossible to describe them," he declared. Architecturally speaking, he explained, "they were determined by the acoustics, since the ceiling and walls had to vary a great deal to break up the sound. The result," he said after some thought, "is a kind of network of colors, a criss-crossing of gold bands and setbacks of other colors. It's a very lively scene in purple, green and red. The design, on the other hand, is essentially quiet-but very unique-and is a sort of background to these strong colors."
CYRIL HARRIS continued itself is designed to equalize the sound that is carried throughout the hall. Mehta: What is the reason for the steep slope of the seats in the auditorium? Harris: That comes from my research into ancient Greek and Roman theaters: We found that if you have a sound source close to an absorptive surface, the sound decreases much more rapidly as you go away from the source than if it is over a hard surface. But if you raise the source up high, so it doesn't have to drag over .theabsorption, it gets to the back of the hall with less hindrance. People are very absorptive; each person absorbs about six square feet of highly absorptive acoustical material. So having the sound reach the back without going over the people in front gives it much more sound throw at the back. That's the reason for the steep slope. But even then, the sound would still be less at the back than the front because it has to travel a further distance. So two things were done to equalize the sound: We used the shape of the reflector on the stage and also the ceiling surface to direct more of the sound to the back.
Mehta: What underlines the principle of the ceiling design? Harris: Acoustically, the shape of the ceiling was determined by two considerations. First, it should direct sound to the back of the building. Second, it should scatter some of the sound throughout the hall, all over, so that it is even. In fact, that principle is what makes some of the old Western halls built 150years ago much better than many modern ones. The baroque style resulted in sound-hitting ornaments of different shapes, which would scatter the sound evenly throughout the hall. If you had just a smooth ceiling and smooth sidewalls, you would have some places where you would hear much better than the others. But at the NCPA if you walk along any row, when a performer is singing or playing, the sound tends to be very uniform. Mehta: We found that sounds in the auditorium -a cough, the jingle of bangles, the clicking of cameras~are heard so clearly that they disturb the audience and probably the performer. Is there any way of tackling this problem? Harris: The answer is no. The fact is that
ordinarily you don't hear this in the usual hall because the acoustical conditions are poor. the noise level is high and you can't hear that well either. In the United States after the Kennedy Center opened, a music critic wrote: "Our audiences are going to have to be quieter than they have been in the past." I hope that audiences here will realize this. At the Metropolitan Opera House in New York they have a camera at the stage all the time. When people come in late, they won't let them in until there is a break in the program. Latecomers move over to the foyer and view the performance on the TV screen there. Mehta: Some people doubt if the cost for perfect acoustics is justified. Harris: That is not really a question for me to answer here. But the objection to costs is not unique to India. When the Kennedy Center was proposed, some people said, the money-about $80 million or so-could instead be given to struggling performers. Well, what has happened is that these performers-who didn't have a job, or any place to perform-now have, on some