Comstock's magazine 0620 - June June 2020 | Page 53

UC DAVIS
Ann E. Pitzer Center
Architect: LPAS
Project cost: $16.8 million
Completed: 2016
It took nearly 20 years and a $5 million donation from Ann E. Pitzer, a 1958
UC Davis alumna, for the university to complete its new 17,500-squarefoot
performing arts center. The Ann E. Pitzer Center includes a 399-seat
recital hall with a high-tech audiovisual system that doubles as a lecture
hall. Faculty offices, support spaces, soundproof practice rooms with stateof-the-art
acoustics and a lobby round out the project.
The architects’ biggest challenge was how to appropriately place
the building on an unusually shaped site between a street and the
campus’s arboretum. The project is an imposing mass, with the recital
hall rising 50 feet. “We had to think about how to place the project onsite
in a way that maintained a nice pedestrian scale along Hutchison
Drive and the entrance to campus, as well as facing the arboretum,”
says architect Curtis Owyang, principal with LPAS. “It was an important
gateway building.”
The building’s transparent glass lobby welcomes visitors, patrons
and students approaching from the eastern part of campus near downtown
Davis. The lobby has turned out to be a popular gathering space for
students between classes with fixed seating, great acoustics and ample
power outlets. The architects worked with renowned acoustic specialist
David Kahn — whose firm Acoustic Distinctions also engineered the
acoustical spaces for the Apollo Theater in New York — to set the criteria
for the acoustic performance of the space. A system of adjustable motorized
curtains and risers allow for tuning, based on performance type.
“This building is all about music,” says Owyang. “As opposed to
other spaces that have to do with theater or drama or dance, this building
is specifically designed to be the ideal space for the instruction and
performance of music.”
PHOTO BY MISHA BRUK
June 2020 | comstocksmag.com 53