Adjacent to New York City’s most hallowed site, Perelman Performing Arts Center (PACNYC) is the cultural keystone and final public element in the World Trade Center master plan, embracing the restorative power of art as a counterpoint to the site’s commemorative import. The building’s pure form—rotated and elevated to accommodate complex below- and at-grade constraints—is wrapped in translucent marble. By day, the volume is an elegant, book-matched stone edifice acknowledging the solemnity of the 9/11 Memorial across the street. By night, this monolith dematerializes, subtly revealing PACNYC’s creative energy inside.

The building’s structure weaves through four subterranean levels and one above-grade stylobate of transit infrastructure, responds to pre-existing foundations of a previous architect’s design with insufficient bearing capacity, and accommodates stringent blast and acoustic isolation requirements. To overcome these constraints, seven “super columns” reach through the infrastructure like spider webs to grab bearing capacity wherever possible. These awkwardly spaced super columns resolve into a structural plate, on top of which a massive belt truss ties the entire building together. Nestled within the plate and truss, PACNYC’s three highly reconfigurable theaters float independently from each other and the rest of the building on high-density rubber pads, allowing simultaneous performances while protecting them from the low-frequency vibrations of the trains, subways, and trucks below. To address blast requirements while minimizing weight, the building relies on the suppleness of its unique marble-glass façade and complex hardened-plate steel assemblies, whose details had to be extensively reviewed by the site’s many governing authorities.