What the press has said

Theatre for a New Audience

“The first theatre in New York designed and built expressly for classic drama since Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont in the 1960s.”

Claire Tow Theater, Lincoln Center

“A sleek and seemingly simple glass-and-aluminum volume encloses a high-tech theater devoted to keeping classics current.”

Radio City Music Hall

“The art deco exuberance of the 1930s” — captured and returned. Time Magazine Best of Design, 1999. National Trust for Historic Preservation Honor Award. AIA Honor Award for Interior Architecture.

Coverage

Architectural Record covered H3 projects including the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center (2012 Annual Design Review winner), the BAM Richard B. Fisher Building, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, and the Theatre for a New Audience — naming the firm among the most consequential practices in American cultural architecture.

“…the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, home to Theater for a New Audience, in Brooklyn. That stripped-down, high-tech venue, utterly unlike Radio City or the other historic theaters it succeeded, is an optical and acoustical triumph.”

“[The firm’s] designs are theatrical and ingenious, and reflect the artistic institutions they’re built for.”

Recognition

AIA New York awarded H3 the 2015 Architecture Merit Award and Design Award of Excellence for the Theatre for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. The firm received the 2013 AIA New York State Design Award of Excellence for Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3, and multiple additional chapter awards across its history.

“There is scarcely a cultural icon in the city with which Mr. Hardy has not been involved.”

“Hugh Hardy was unfettered by the conventional and expected; he was a master at creating spaces that are vivid, dramatic, alive.”

Context

Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic for The New York Times and professor of design at the New School, said of Hardy’s work: “He saw architecture as a means for creating an emotional experience, and he wanted people to feel instinctively that they were in a place that was a celebration of old and new.”

“Hugh Hardy was a remarkably special theatre architect. To many architects, a theatre is just another building. To Hugh, a theatre was something very special. He truly loved theatre.”

“His theatre restorations were models of perfect theatrical taste: the Victory Theatre on 42nd Street, Radio City Music Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, most wondrous of all, the New Amsterdam Theatre — surely one of the most beauteous theatres in the world.”

“Hardy was one of the first American architects to pioneer ‘three-dimensional’ theatre, bringing back multiple-level balconies with side boxes.”

“The story of Hugh Hardy’s career is so closely intertwined with the cultural landscape of New York over the past forty years that his presence is felt in virtually every significant arts institution in the city. Much of what we love best about New York’s architectural survival and revival since the 1970s has benefited from Hugh’s touch.”

“As an architect, Hugh Hardy was unfettered by the conventional and expected; he was a master at creating spaces that are vivid, dramatic, alive. As a New Yorker, he defined the idea of civic.”

“There’s no signature style to speak of — rather a signature playfulness, erudition, and willingness to take risks.”

“For the past half-century, few architects in New York City had better claim to the role of great civic booster than Hugh Hardy — a true gentleman of the old school.”

“Step into one of the many buildings that Hardy designed or restored, and you can still feel his exuberance and signature joie de vivre. His work manages to feel both delightfully irreverent and deeply committed to the history of the building and the city.”

“He really believed in New York City as an idea. He wanted every space to bring people together and make them feel excited about the place where they lived.”

Interior Design Hall of Fame

Hugh Hardy was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 1992, recognizing his transformative contributions to the interiors of America’s most beloved cultural institutions.