en.Wedoany.com Reported - Garrison, New York, USA — The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center, designed by Studio Gang, opened this week in the Hudson Valley, providing a permanent open-air theatre for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. The company previously performed in a temporary tent at the Boscobel House and Gardens estate.

Built on a former golf course, the open-air theatre features landscape design by Nelson Byrd Woltz, which transformed the site into a 98-acre company campus, restoring biodiversity through native meadows and wetland rehabilitation. The main theatre, covering 6,800 square feet with 451 seats, is formed by a curved gridshell structure supported by massive A-frame timber columns. The proscenium arch of the stage is positioned to frame views of Storm King Mountain. The theatre includes a 10,000-square-foot backstage area housing dressing rooms, a green room, costume shop, offices, and public amenities, distributed across small-scale buildings clad in charred cypress using the traditional Japanese shou sugi ban technique.

Jeanne Gang, founding principal of Studio Gang, stated: "The building's curved, mass-timber structure not only harmonizes with the natural beauty of the site but also sets an example for a more sustainable future for cultural performance spaces." Featuring a low-carbon mass timber structure, rooftop solar panels, and a rainwater harvesting and reuse system, the open-air theatre is expected to become the first purpose-built open-air theatre in the United States to achieve LEED Platinum certification. The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.

The land was donated to the company in 2019 by philanthropist Chris Davis. Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Davis McCallum and Kendra Ekelund collaborated with Studio Gang and Nelson Byrd Woltz to develop a master plan, which has been implemented in phases over the past six years. Renderings of the open-air theatre were released in 2023, with groundbreaking taking place in 2024.

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