Case Study: Hanch­er Audi­to­ri­um — Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa

Hanch­er Audi­to­ri­um, the pre­mier per­form­ing arts venue in East­ern Iowa, was destroyed in 2008 in a his­toric 100-year flood. The new home for this pre­mier per­form­ing arts cen­ter opened in Sep­tem­ber 2016 with a high­ly effi­cient and sus­tain­able design. The building’s grand design, shape, and fea­tures are all very dis­tinc­tive to fit the func­tion of the venue and the land­scape on which it resides.

“With sweep­ing hor­i­zon­tal forms that echo the land­scape and the curve of the riv­er, the design draws from the building’s nat­ur­al sur­round­ings.” – Pel­li Clarke Pel­li Architects

The inte­ri­or sig­nage was designed with com­pli­men­ta­ry stain­less steel and wood fea­tures that car­ry through­out the cus­tom envi­ron­men­tal graph­ics-heavy pack­age. Unique sig­nage fea­tures, such as the show­case wall and coat check, were designed as state­ment pieces serv­ing a dual func­tion of aes­thet­ics and signage.

Donor recog­ni­tion dis­plays also played a key role in this facil­i­ty. It was designed as a com­ple­ment to the inte­ri­or fin­ish­es of the facil­i­ty while appear­ing as a tru­ly artis­tic fea­ture. Through care­ful nego­ti­a­tions and val­ue-engi­neer­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, Lat­i­tude offered solu­tions for high-end per­form­ing prod­ucts that sat­is­fied the design cri­te­ria and met a very tight time­line for instal­la­tion before their much-pub­li­cized pub­lic open house. The main donor wall was com­prised of indi­vid­ual pan­els con­struct­ed of an excep­tion­al acrylic mate­r­i­al that com­pli­ment­ed oth­er inte­ri­or fin­ished with­in the build­ing. Oth­er donor recog­ni­tion pieces were con­struct­ed as stain­less steel plaques to inte­grate with the front-of-house signage.

This sig­nage project was recent­ly rec­og­nized in the annu­al ​“Best of Lat­i­tude” com­pe­ti­tion: win­ning both ​“Best Inte­ri­or Solu­tion” and the dis­tin­guished ​“Over­all Best of Lat­i­tude – Bloom Award” for project of the year.

Project Design­er: Pen­ta­gram

Project Archi­tects: Pel­li Clarke Pel­li; OPN Archi­tects