There’s something that’s a bit magical about performing spaces that have a brick wall.
The Luminary Arts Center has a brick wall behind its vast stage, but the current brick wall the audience faces is a different brick wall they faced before the space reopened after its recent renovation.
It turns out shifting the audience’s viewpoint by 180 degrees was part of Shelter Architecture + Interior Design’s thoughtful redesign of the space, which strongly considered accessibility as part of their approach.
The firm, which this year celebrates 20 years since its founding in Loring Park, earned a national award for the project, called the Community FOCUS design award from the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). It was one of two awards Shelter Architecture received from ASID, with the other being the Wellness FOCUS design award for a project in Wisconsin for River Prairie Wealth Partners. In total, 5 awards went to Minnesota-based architects and firms at the award ceremony in August.
Before Shelter Architecture embarked on the renovation designs for the Luminary Arts Center, the firm surveyed different arts organizations that use the space about what they needed or wanted. There was one request they saw again and again in those surveys, according to Kurt Gough, a founding partner and lead designer with Shelter:
“The number one response to the whole thing was, don’t get rid of our brick wall,” Gough told me in a Zoom interview.
Built out of a subterranean warehouse, the Luminary Arts Center— which was first developed as a performance lab space in the 1980s by the Guthrie Theater and is now operated by the Minnesota Opera as a venue for numerous different performance groups— features interesting-looking bricks that give a lot of character to the space.
According to Gough, who has a background in theater before starting a second career as an architect— a brick wall is an instant “win” for a scenic designer. “I don’t have to spend any money, I just throw a light on this beautiful thing,” he said.
But Shelter Architects did want to switch the particular brick wall that the audience faces when they watch performances. Rather than coming down the stairs or elevator and crossing the stage to get to the risers, the firm proposed to set the risers against the wall near the stairs.
Before and after shots of the Luminary staircases. Credit: Shelter Architecture
“We literally did lighting tests on both walls to basically prove to the user group that this wall is as dynamic and as exciting as that wall,” he said.
The big reason for making the switch, according to Gough, was psychological. In the old configuration, Gough always felt like he was attending a high school pep rally as he walked all the way across the performing space to get to the audience seats. “It just was weird, and so we really fought for moving it to the other wall,” he said. As a bonus, the shift made sense from a technical point of view, creating more possibilities for a backstage area, and creating space for a curtain to cover the entire back wall for crossovers.
Rather than coming down the stairs or elevator and crossing the stage to get to the risers, Shelter Architecture proposed to set the risers against the wall near the stairs. Credit: Shelter Architecture
Gough founded Shelter back in 2004 with Jackie Millea, the president of the firm, and John Dwyer— who has since moved on from the company. They had all received their masters degrees in architecture from the University of Minnesota. Gough and Millea had worked together at another design firm called Barbour / LaDouceur Design Group (BLDG) before starting out on their own. John Barbour, from that firm, is now a partner at Shelter.
Their early years were focused on sustainability. “It wasn’t really being talked about in the residential community,” Millea said.
Shelter was an early adopter of solar panels and green roofs, and was ahead of the curve working with the LEED rating systems. They’ve also had a focus on design for all ages and abilities, Millea said. “We picked some causes that we cared about, and we tried to stand on that three legged stool and direct our project focus,” she said.
A key accessibility aspect of the Luminary Arts Center design was shifting gendered restrooms into a series of enclosed gender neutral stalls. Each stall is fully enclosed for more privacy, and there’s a shared space for hand washing.
According to Millea, Shelter has spent the past 10-15 years educating clients about why shifting to gender neutral bathrooms is important. “Now, the conversations are more open,” she said, “and people understand it in a different way than they did a while back.”
A key accessibility aspect of the Luminary Arts Center design was shifting gendered restrooms into a series of enclosed gender neutral stalls. Credit: Shelter Architecture
Lisa Antenucci, an interior designer working on the project, said the team paid attention to the colors when they were thinking about the design. “We didn’t want it to feel too feminine,” she said. In addition, there’s a pop of color on the ceiling as you enter the bathroom stall.
Often when starting on a project, the Shelter team thinks about who is going to be a part of the space. At the Luminary Arts Center, the previous building didn’t have any windows onto the street. “The building was sort of a mystery to the neighborhood, and didn’t really create any accessibility or welcoming aspects to the neighborhood,” Millea said. “So we opened up windows in the storefront to allow those views in.”
There were certain quirks specific to the building that made the team’s accessibility focus a challenge at times. Before the Guthrie started using in the 1980s, the top part of the building had burned down some 40 years before, leaving only the deep basement warehouse space. When the Guthrie bought the building, they added a small storefront on top of the theater.
Shockingly enough, for the decades the space was used for performances (after the Guthrie, it operated as a venue called The Lab), there was no freight elevator to bring in large set pieces or equipment up and down the 30 foot drop. The only way you could get something up and down out of the theater was via a chain hoist. “Everything had to go down through that chain hoist, so it was a lot of manual labor to move things around in there and reset things and set things up,” Gough said, recalling his days working in the Guthrie’s prop department. “You knew you were in for a very physical day when you were sent over to The Lab.”
The firm also considered people that need to use the elevator when they redesigned the entrance into the theater. “The elevator was in this really weird hallway, with a really weird approach to it,” Millea said. They redesigned the area so that people using the elevator now get a view into the theater before they head downstairs.
Millea’s personal experience informs her insight as a designer. As a young designer, her dad became a quadriplegic, and was unable to use the restroom by himself. In the Luminary Arts Center design, the team added an adult changing table to the ADA restroom. “We created spaces where it doesn’t feel awkward for people who use those spaces,” she said.
Shelter’s ASID award comes a year after the society re-introduced its project-based awards after over a decade. “I think it was really important for them to bring back these project based awards and recognize the work that we’re doing as firms, as opposed to just individual recognition,” Millea said. “It’s nice to be recognized as an organization for doing meaningful work, so that the community understands that’s the level of work that’s coming out of this amazing Twin Cities design community.”
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at [email protected].