A project team led by Diamond Schmitt Architects and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects has been tapped to transform David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, home of the New York Philharmonic. 

According to a press release, the $550 million project aims to revitalize the performance hall into a venue that "will bring everyone closer to the music" while also allowing patrons to "feel closer to one another." The scheme doubles the size of the hall's lobby, creating a new welcome center while also adding "more places to meet, work, drink, and hang out." The facilities are set to include interior visualization walls designed to receive musical projections, including concert livestreams that will be made free to the public. The proposal would also reconfigure an exterior facade that will serve as a "canvas for artists to create site-specific works to bring the building alive."

The proposal is the latest in a series of rehabilitation efforts for Geffen Hall. A previous iteration of the project unveiled in 2015 included contributions from the Heatherwick Studio and Diamond Schmitt Architects; Three years before that, Foster + Partners had been tapped to lead its own overhaul. 

Originally known simply as the Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, the classically-inspired concert venue features an exterior arcade marked by angular, tapered travertine columns that stand in opposition to the sheer arches that mark the David H. Koch Theater located beside it. The latest proposal seeks to close in this arcade with glass walls, an effort that will permanently remove the much-loved Orpheus and Apollo sculpture that was previously installed within the existing lobby space, Gothamist reports.  

Lincoln Center is a product of Robert Moses-led urban renewal that sought to reshape the surrounding Lincoln Square neighborhood; Geffen Hall was originally designed by Mid-Century architect Max Abramovitz, while the complex, which includes the Julliard School and a series of concert, theater, and performance spaces, features design contributions from an array of notable designers, including Philip Johnson, Davis, Brody and Associates, H3 hardy Collaborative, Gordon Bunshaft, Pietro Belluschi, and Eero Saarinen. 

In 2012, a team led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in association with FXCollaborative and Beyer Blinder Belle completed a large scale renovation of the site intended "to turn the campus inside out by extending the spectacle within the performance halls into the mute public spaces between the halls and into the surrounding streets," according to the DS+R website.

With the latest plan, the project team is aiming to overhaul the experiential qualities of the concert spaces themselves, as well, and will remove 500 seats from audience areas to reconfigure the acoustics of the space. Describing the structure's notorious sound issues, Justin Davidson, classical music and architecture critic for New York Magazine writes, "Most of the acoustical problems were diagnosed and their treatments prescribed decades ago, but since the first gut renovation, in 1976, failed, the Philharmonic kept popping acoustical aspirin, dangling reflectors from the ceiling and affixing bulbous barnacles on the sides of the stage."

As far as the project backers are concerned, the planned changes for the project will resolve these long-standing issues. A project statement signed by Lincoln Center President and CEO Henry Timms and New York Philharmonic President and CEO Deborah Borda explains, "David Geffen Hall will now sound and feel intimate and connected. We are moving the stage forward, wrapping the audience around the orchestra, reducing the number of seats, and improving sightlines in every part of the hall. The environment will be vibrant, warm, and welcoming — with terrific acoustics."

The project is set to start construction in 2022 with a projected completion date of March 2024.