Designing for the Future Today: How Performance Architecture is Evolving to Future-Proof the Experiences of Tomorrow
08/09/25
Author: Liz Blessing
Using Event and Auditorium Spaces More Flexibly Can Increase Your Revenue
[This article was presented as a poster at the ASTC Annual Conference 2025, one of the premier annual events for science-engagement professionals and leaders in science and technology centers and museums as well as allied organizations across North America and around the world]
As financial pressures increase institutions need to be increasingly clever with how they use their available space to educate, inform and generate the necessary revenue to support their missions. Museums may be able to learn from practices that have become more commonplace in the theater and themed entertainment industry related to creating spaces that can literally transform in form and function enabling multiple disparate uses for existing square footage. Having an event space that can literally change its shape, allows operators to use their existing spaces more flexibly to allow for more programming in fewer spaces.
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK
MK Gallery; Photographed by Johan Dehlin
The Sky Room at the MK Gallery is used for exhibitions, lectures, performances, and cinema. MK Gallery is able to enable this wide range of uses by incorporating technical systems that allow them to transform from a stage format with a raised seating bank to a flat floor mode via the use of a telescopic seating unit. Additionally, the room is able to take advantage of the natural light the windows offer or alternately block daylight via the use of a perimeter tracked curtain system that provides both light block and sound absorption. As a cinema, programmed by Curzon, the Sky Room has a dedicated projection room, excellent sightlines, and cinema-quality surround sound. Lectures and performance functions are supported by an overhead pipe grid to support audio and stage lighting infrastructure. The pipe grid is sized and rated for suspension of gallery exhibits and special installations. For MK Gallery this means that in the same square footage they can flexibly program the space for more hours of the day and with the telescopic seating bank transformation from seated risers to flat floor can be achieved in under an hour.
Obama Presidential Center, Chicago, IL, USA
Obama Presidential Center; Rendering by Charcoalblue
Obama Presidential Center; Rendering by Charcoalblue
Obama Presidential Center; Rendering by Charcoalblue
The Obama Presidential Center features an auditorium with a flexible end stage setup that allows the stage to be set up in 3 different configurations allowing for varying levels of intimacy between speaker and audience. This transformation is enabled via the usage of scissor lift decks, a simple mechanical means of quickly creating new riser heights. This allows the center to raise the first 3 rows of seating to become an extended stage when the speaker wants a closer connection to the audience or lower them into a recess in the floor and place chairs on them to allow for more seats and a higher capacity for revenue generating events.
Blackbox Theatre Rendering - Rendered by Brandnu Design, provided by Gensler
Blackbox Theatre Rendering - Rendered by Brandnu Design, provided by Gensler
Blackbox Theatre Rendering - Rendered by Brandnu Design, provided by Gensler
Hip Hop Museum, Bronx, NY, USA
The Hip Hop Museum’s main performance space will have a signature look and will accommodate many types of live performances and presentations. Utilizing a unique and innovative retractable seating system, the venue will have multiple formats, ranging from corner stage and cabaret to film screening and tiered banquet seating. The space also contains a unique overhead grid, and additional strongpoints integrated into the custom triangular ceiling panels. A large operable partition, which connects the venue to the main public lobby on the 2nd floor of the museum, allows for performance and event layouts that can spill into and out of the porous theatre space.
Technical Systems that Enable Transformation:
Demountable Platform Systems
A demountable platform system is a system composed of stage decks typically 3’ - 4’ x 6’ - 8’ wide by long. A system of these decks can be designed to setup audience or stage configurations that are used temporarily and then removed when no longer necessary.
Scissor Lift Decks
These are staging deck platforms with a pair of levers built into the frame and feet of the platform. They allow for quick drill-assisted transformations of staging heights without the need to exchange the legs on the stage deck.
Curtain Track Systems
A curtain track system using theatrical grade curtains and track can cover long spans and wide distances and be operated manually or via the use of motors or pulleys to perform any of the following functions: sound control, room separation, or daylighting control. More robust than architectural curtain tracks, these track systems can handle curves and complex shapes and handle heavyweight curtain loads.
Operable Walls
An operable wall is a system of movable panels that can divide a larger space into smaller separate rooms or open it up into one larger area. Ranging from small 8’ tall systems to incredibly large 20’ behemoths. These elements can allow facilities teams to subdivide smaller spaces.
Telescopic Seating Platform
Telescopic seating units provide an easy and versatile solution to a flexible configuration requirement to an auditorium space. Telescopic seating units may be configured to retrack into a cove in the wall or be compacted into portable seating towers that may be moved to other areas of a building to free up more floorspace.
Pipe Grids
A rigging system composed of a system of two arrays of pipes on a regular 3'-0" to 5'-0" center to center installed perpendicular to each other. Pipe grids are typically two levels and are composed of primary pipes which are connected to the structure via the means of grid hangers and of secondary pipes which are the lower system of pipes supported by the primary pipes. Pipe grids can also be designed to support very heavy loads at specific intersections to allow for flexible uses of overhead infrastructure with the use of strongpoints.
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