New York, NY

H3 participated in the National Building Museum’s exhibition, Reinventing the Globe: A Shakespearean Theater for the 21st Century. The exhibit traced the long-standing fascination with the Globe Theater, where many of Shakespeare’s plays premiered. Building from that rich history, our firm designed a hypothetical Shakespearean theater for the 21st century.

H3 utilized the efforts of Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, who proved Shakespeare’s plays could be presented by American actors without the stylistic encrustations and rhetorical delivery of British theater.

Our new structure replaces the Renaissance Hotel in Times Square, New York’s pre-eminent playground. The area is a place where moving commercial messages assault the senses in a glowing expanse of popular entertainment. We use similar embellishments to subsidize theater in a new way. The first four floors of the New Global Theater feature retail stores owned by these advertisers. The theater’s faceted form comprises planes of louvered, self-cleaning glass, set at different angles.

To honor Papp’s mission to introduce diverse audiences to Shakespeare’s work, H3 also designed a floating version of the New Global Theater. The structure can travel to any pier in New York’s huge harbor, providing access to performance in unsuspected places all over the city. There are numerous sites in each of the five boroughs where adventure can unfold.

CLIENT: National Building Museum
COMPLETION: 2011
SIZE: 25,000 square feet