The Zeiders American Dream Theater in Virginia Beach, Va., is part of a larger mixed-use development aimed at creating a live-work-shop-play urban community. The Town Center of Virginia Beach, which takes up an entire block, includes 43,500 square feet of ground-floor retail and related support space, a restaurant, public plaza, apartment leasing office. The theater is on the second level, and a 10-story, 131-unit apartment tower is above the restaurant and leasing office.
Theater part of live, work, shop, play urban community
Photo: Yuzhu Zheng
Called the “Z,” the theater includes two performing arts venues—a 310-seat main theater with an elevated stage, tension grid and control room facilities and a 100-seat black box multipurpose theater—as well as a recording studio. According to Grey Mason, vice president for production with Virginia Beach-based architect Cox, Kliewer & Co. PC, the Z is designed to complement, not compete with, the existing performing arts Sandler Center by offering a wider variety of programs, more modest productions and a venue for performers more closely associated with the local community.
Opened in October 2018, Mason says the massing of the theater originates from the positioning of the two houses, connected with the shared glass pre-function space, box office/entrance and related support facilities. “The orientation and form of the aluminum-clad, canted walls gesture toward the public courtyard of the Sander Center and are arranged to form gathering alcoves on the plaza,” he says.
The theater’s exterior skin is a combination of glass curtainwall from YKK AP America Inc., Austell, Ga., exterior porcelain tile and three colors of Versa-Lok metal wall panels from ATAS International Inc., Allentown, Pa. The Versa-Lok flat shingle-style wall panels were supplied in 0.032 and 0.040 aluminum with a 70% PVDF finish. Together, the panels create classic rectangular shapes in a variety of mix-and-match sizes. Royal Exteriors, Henrico, Va., installed the 16-inch by 60-inch panels horizontally using concealed clips and fasteners.
To create greater interest to the large façade areas, Mason says the team selected three Versa-Lok metallic finishes and applied them in a pattern that appears random, but was actually a carefully arranged repeating pattern made up of 50% Titanium, 25% Silversmith, and 25% Champagne. “The solution was to create a 12 tile block—three courses high, with staggered coursing and distributed colors and arranged to interlock block-to-block—and then in turn, stagger the coursing of the blocks.”
“The metal panels both complement the other materials with the selected color palette, but also provide visual context with the modular pattern of the curtainwall and the tile cladding juxtaposing the seemingly random tile pattern of the Versa-Lok,” Mason continues. “In addition, with the Versa-Lok panels, the characteristics of the material and the fastening/joining system allowed us to achieve the canted and sloped form of the metal-cladded portions of the exterior. The glass curtainwall terminates at each end of the lobby spaces at the entrance to each of the two theaters, connected by clerestory windows over the passage that links the two spaces. This connection of glass visible from the exterior was an important feature of the design. With the porcelain tile, we were looking for a material that complemented the stone cladding used on the other buildings and concrete pavers used for the plaza, and that had a horizontal pattern and texture that contrasted with the vertical pattern of the glazing system.”