Welcome to the Archives of The Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture. The purpose of this online collection is to function as a tool for scholars, students, architects, preservationists, journalists and other interested parties. The archive consists of photographs, slides, articles and publications from Rudolph’s lifetime; physical drawings and models; personal photos and memorabilia; and contemporary photographs and articles.
Some of the materials are in the public domain, some are offered under Creative Commons, and some are owned by others, including the Paul Rudolph Estate. Please speak with a representative of The Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture before using any drawings or photos in the Archives. In all cases, the researcher shall determine how to appropriately publish or otherwise distribute the materials found in this collection, while maintaining appropriate protection of the applicable intellectual property rights.
In his will, Paul Rudolph gave his Architectural Archives (including drawings, plans, renderings, blueprints, models and other materials prepared in connection with his professional practice of architecture) to the Library of Congress Trust Fund following his death in 1997. A Stipulation of Settlement, signed on June 6, 2001 between the Paul Rudolph Estate and the Library of Congress Trust Fund, resulted in the transfer of those items to the Library of Congress among the Architectural Archives, that the Library of Congress determined suitable for its collections. The intellectual property rights of items transferred to the Library of Congress are in the public domain. The usage of the Paul M. Rudolph Archive at the Library of Congress and any intellectual property rights are governed by the Library of Congress Rights and Permissions.
However, the Library of Congress has not received the entirety of the Paul Rudolph architectural works, and therefore ownership and intellectual property rights of any materials that were not selected by the Library of Congress may not be in the public domain and may belong to the Paul Rudolph Estate.
LOCATION
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STATUS
Type: Culture
Status: Project
TECHNICAL DATA
Date(s): 1961
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PROFESSIONAL TEAM
Client: The Ford Foundation Program in Humanities and the Arts
Architect: Paul Rudolph
Stage Designer: Ralph Alswang
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The Ideal Theater
In 1960, the Ford Foundation Program for Theater Design is created under an $800,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.
The design is presented as part of “The Ideal Theater: Eight Concepts,” an exhibition of resulting designs and models prepared and circulated by the American Federation of Arts and designed by Peter Larkin and the firm of Alex-Mauro-Witteborg.
The design is a 2,000-seat theater using new film-projection techniques and live stage action simultaneously. It allows for dramas that would take place partly on film, and includes a vast movie screen that sweeps around three sides of the auditorium.
The appearance of the outside of the building, with its multiple outcroppings, expresses figuratively and literally what goes on inside. It is designed for the use of film projection - but very elaborate and sophisticated film projection - and the six outcroppings are the six projection booths that focus on the stage from as many directions. Three of them are for front-projected images, three for rear-projected images, and the screen they project upon is not really a screen at all. It is a continuous curtain of translucent vertical louvers, embracing both backstage and side walls, and its surface can be made to appear transparent or opaque, depending upon the way light is thrown against it. The film would be project against all or part of this parabolic surface, and the louvers would open, permitting the actors, in effect, to walk out of the scenery. It is intended that films would be especially made for this theater, so that their scale and perspective coincided with that of the actors and action. In addition to realistic film, it would also use abstract film of color and movement for certain kinds of productions.
The material is displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Crafts in New York City from January 26 to March 4 in 1962. The exhibit then goes on a 14-city national tour afterwards until January, 1964. Conspicuously absent from the exhibition are estimates of what any of the proposed structures would cost. According to a museum aide ‘such consideration is deliberately left out so that creative imagination could work unhampered.’
The material is displayed in the Terrace Lounge of the Iowa Memorial Union at the University of Iowa from June 27 to July 10 in 1965.
“The most novel, most inventive, and most experimental of all these eight ‘concepts’ may well be Ralph Alswang’s and Paul Rudolph’s for a 2,000-seat theater using film projection techniques and live stage action simultaneously. It raises questions: perhaps the live actor and screened image might not make a happy marriage, and the combination wouldn’t result in artistically satisfying effects; perhaps it would fascinate for a while and then become monotonous for want of sufficient possibilities of transformation? But perhaps, on the other hand, such a theater might lead to something wonderfully fresh in the way of theatrical excitement.”
“An attempt to provide an instrument for the intermeshing of movie projections and stills with live actors. The projection sources are housed in specific volumes which are juxtaposed to the more fluid forms required by live actors.”
DRAWINGS - Design Drawings / Renderings
DRAWINGS - Construction Drawings
DRAWINGS - Shop Drawings
PHOTOS - Project Model
PHOTOS - During Construction
PHOTOS - Completed Project
PHOTOS - Current Conditions
LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION
RELATED DOWNLOADS
PROJECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Federation of Arts. The Ideal Theater: Eight Concepts. The American Federation of Arts, 1962.
Athanasopulos, Christos. Contemporary Theater Evolution and Design. Wiley-Interscience, 1983.
“Centre Administratif d’etat de Massachusetts a Boston; Hotel de Ville, Syracuse, NY; Projet Pour Un Theatre a Boston.” Architecture D’Aujourd’hui, no. 35, Sept. 1965, pp. 32–35.
“Exhibitions Are Viewed At Carnegie.” Uniontown Morning Herald, November 21, 1962. p. 43
“Film and Action Theater.” Architecture and Urbanism, no. 80, July 1977, p. 159.
Harold Clurman. “Eight Ideal Theaters.” Industrial Design, no. 9, Apr. 1962, pp. 46–47.
“Ideal Theater Ford Foundation Progam.” Progressive Architecture, no. 42, Dec. 1961, p. 51.
Paul Rudolph and Sybil Moholy-Nagy. The Architecture of Paul Rudolph. Praeger, 1970.
“Recherches Americaines Pour Un Theatre Ideal.” Architecture D’Aujourd’hui, no. 34, Feb. 1964, p. 39.
“Theatre Project for the Ford Foundation.” Progressive Architecture, no. 43, Feb. 1962, pp. 110–11.