21,000-Seat Auditorium One of the World's Largest Indoor Worship Spaces

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 10, 2000) The theatre consulting firm of Auerbach + Associates, San Francisco and New York, announced today the completion of the new Conference Center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. Auerbach + Glasow, the architectural lighting division of Auerbach + Associates, provided the architectural lighting design for the conference center, including the lighting of the public spaces, the exterior landscape lighting on the roof garden, and the custom design of nearly all visible interior and exterior lighting fixtures.

The l.5 million square-foot Conference Center was formally dedicated on October 8th, 2000. It consists of a 21,000-seat auditorium, one of the world's largest indoor worship and conference spaces, and a 911-seat proscenium theatre.

A singular aspect of the building is its size. Twenty-one thousand-seat venues are common in an arena format with oval-shaped seating configurations; however, this auditorium has a fan-shaped seating configuration, centered on the speaker at the pulpit. This single focal point is unique to human experience in theatrical terms in an auditorium of this size. "We don't know of any place that is this big in this configuration," said Thomas E. Hanson, Director, LDS Special Projects.

Auerbach + Associates played a major role in the design of the auditorium. The firm's work encompassed the development of the configuration of the hall and the design of highly advanced theatrical and lighting systems. The scope of work included:

• Collaboration on the programming and design of the conference auditorium.
  
• Design of the theatrical systems, including the theatrical lighting system, the rigging system, and the room configuration.
  
• Design of seating and audience circulation.
  
• Design of the moveable and demountable rostrum.
  
• Design of remote-controlled video camera pylons and automated speaker's pulpit.
  
• Design of the lighting for the television broadcast support space.
  
• Design of the lighting control and network distribution systems, power distribution, and power requirements for the theatrical systems.

The Conference Center will be used to seat those who attend the Church's General Conferences, which are held twice a year, in October and April. At other times of the year, the auditorium can be reconfigured to host pageants, concerts, special events, and music performances.

General Conference, formerly hosted in the 6,000-seat Tabernacle, has been attended by as many as 50,000 people over the course of the two-day, five-session event, and viewed by millions throughout the world over live television.

Auerbach + Associates and the design team worked hard to create a comfortable space with apparent intimacy considering the scale of the hall. Despite the fact that the distance from the pulpit to the last row of the third tier of seats is the length of a football field, the criteria from the beginning of the design process has been to have each member of the audience see the speaker and hear the words as if the speaker was addressing him or her personally.

Creating the Environment

Auerbach + Associates participated in the very early design of the building, and worked closely with Leland Gray and Kerry Nielsen, Church architects, and Bob Frasca and Bill Williams, architects for Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, in the programming and design of the auditorium's interior. Planning with the architectural team started in early 1996 and construction officially began in 1997. S. Leonard Auerbach, President, was the Principal in Charge and Principal Designer of the project for Auerbach + Associates. Steve Pollock, Vice President, was Associate Designer and Tom Neville was Project Manager for Auerbach + Associates.

Patty Glasow, Principal of Auerbach + Glasow, designed the interior and exterior architectural lighting, and together with Bob Frasca, Leland Gray, Len Auerbach and Jane Marshall designed the custom light fixtures. Susan Porter was the Interior Lighting Designer and Richard Osborn was the Exterior Lighting Designer.

"We had a very strong collaboration with Len Auerbach and his team from San Francisco," said Architect Robert Frasca of the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership. "We designed the building from the inside out and outside in, simultaneously. Len and his team and our acoustic consultants worked closely together with us."

The structure was designed to last for at least 150 years and has infrastructure to accommodate the latest technology throughout its entire lifetime. Auerbach + Associates' mandate was to design theatre systems that could accommodate events well into the future. Auerbach + Associates met that challenge by creating an infrastructure of data distribution, power, structural support, and an accessible service tunnel system. The firm designed a grid system over the stage that supports a variety of remote-controlled rigging and hoisting elements. The tunnel system provides for future cable installation, and connects with a sub-stage mechanical pit that will be used for theatrical machinery and special effects systems during pageants. The front of the audience area and the presentation platform is reconfigurable, allowing the tiered seating for the 352-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the rostrum for the 158-member General Authorities to be removed, revealing a flat floor. The platform level and flat audience floor can be used for anything from an orchestra performance to a Church-sponsored pageant that may have hundreds of performers.

Early in the design process, the criteria for the seating capacity was not clearly defined. Auerbach + Associates developed several spaces, from 18,000 seats to 30,000 seats, before the 21,000-seat capacity was determined. The 21,000-seat version was chosen because of viewing distance, sight line issues, circulation and exiting requirements, as well as other related issues.

The Auditorium's Unique Configuration

"The interior of this building was designed to be a grand vista with an intimate view," said S. Leonard Auerbach. "As far as we know it is the world's largest finished auditorium. The finished walls and ceilings make it unique. There is no visible structure. We tried to create an apparent intimacy in a huge space. Typically a large-scale audience assembly space is configured like a sports arena that is fitted out for various kinds of performances. Arenas have the feeling of an athletic environment, and they are typically impersonal spaces. We wanted the building to feel like a worship space, not like an arena or coliseum. It was important to the Church that the space feels like the members were coming home. The space needed to have a familiar and comfortable feeling, even though it was a new space."

Although the interior is huge, the line of sight is good from anywhere in the auditorium to the speaker's pulpit. Three tiers of seating face the rostrum. Behind the rostrum, cherry wood risers are arranged in half-circles for the world-famous Tabernacle Choir, and a new 130-rank pipe organ forms a dramatic golden backdrop.

"As a design tool for creating intimacy and good sight lines, we applied the geometric physiognomy of the human being," said Len Auerbach. "We took the geometry of normal forward vision from the pulpit to make sure the full scope of the seating was in view of the presenter. This assured that President Hinckley, when speaking from the rostrum, will be communicating to everybody in all 21,000 seats."

The Rostrum

The rostrum is a large tiered aluminum and steel structure paneled in solid cherry wood, built to hold the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the General Authorities of the Church. It has been designed to be completely removable and de-mountable. Through collaboration with the Church, the design team determined that the rostrum, which is 150 feet wide, 80 feet deep and 30 feet tall, should be convertible to a flat floor to accommodate large productions. To meet this requirement, Len Auerbach designed a unique rostrum structure that can be completely disassembled, moved off the stage in modular sections and stored.

In Auerbach's design, the rostrum separates into 92 modules. Each module weighs thousands of pounds and is mounted on an air caster system. To move the rostrum, each of the 92 pieces is separated, moved off-stage hovering on air casters into a storage area backstage, where they are suspended and stacked. Auerbach + Associates designed pivoting walls, 20 feet wide by 70 feet tall, that open on a single pivot point to allow the movement of the rostrum sections to the backstage storage area. The process is reversed to reassemble the rostrum, which comes together as a seamless whole.

Cutting Edge Theatrical and Architectural Lighting System

The Conference Center has one of the largest and most sophisticated theatrical lighting control systems in the world in one facility. There are 6,000 remotely-controlled dimmers in the building. In addition to the main control console, the theatrical lighting can be controlled from a wireless remote about the size of a hand-held personal digital assistant. It is possible for a lighting technician to stand in the middle of the stage and bring up any stage light in the building with the wireless remote.

Because of the size of the building and the length of the catwalks that connect the vast array of lighting fixtures, the wireless remote controls save time and energy for technicians and stagehands.

The Church wanted to make sure the lighting system never went off-line. In order to meet this goal, the lighting systems, both the architectural lighting as well as the theatrical lighting, are controlled by several control boards running on an Ethernet network, with multiple levels of redundancy. Ethernet was chosen as a data transmission system because of the enormity of the system necessary to carry the control commands throughout the building. Some signal distribution runs are as long as 2,000 feet, and fiber optic cable is the backbone utilized to maintain the integrity of the lighting network signal over that distance. The lighting system network is based on requirements for redundancy, with multiple backup support to avoid failure. The entire network is on an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) followed up by a generator.

The architectural lighting control panels are LCD touch screens located throughout the Conference Center building. The control panels are password-protected. A pre-determined level of control restricts each user's access to control lights in the building. A tour guide, for example, may only be able to turn on the lights in the area being exhibited, but a house manager with high level access can use the same panel to control a greater scope of the system.

The LCD lighting control stations are software-configurable from a personal computer, so they are as flexible as the software that is programmed for them. The hardware components in the building can be upgraded through programming changes to the software, which will significantly increase the life of the hardware.

Theatrical and Broadcast Lighting Plot

The multi-faceted function of the auditorium requires that the lighting is able to quickly respond to a variety of uses. These uses range from a general architectural lighting plan, to a local worship presentation, to a full broadcast setup, to a major theatrical production, all of which must be coordinated and operate completely independently. This requires the multiple setup of thousands of theatrical and television lighting instruments. Auerbach + Associates engaged Emmy award-winning television lighting designer Bill Klages to join their team to establish the broadcast light plot, which was integrated into the overall plan. The result is a totally coordinated use of the large array of lighting positions. Each presentation type can be served independently without disturbing the other lighting designs.

State-of-the-Art Rigging System

Auerbach + Associates conceived a structural steel grating grid 90 feet over the stage, that completely covers the stage area for infinite configurations of hoists and other theatrical machinery. Technicians and stagehands have complete access to the grid, which is about the size of half a football field. In the projected 150-year life span of the auditorium, many different kinds of effects will be possible for events not yet imagined.

Auerbach + Associates designed a software-controlled rigging system to fly scenery over the stage, with 40 installed motorized point hoists, expandable with an additional 30 hoists, similar to automated rigging in an opera house. The hoists have the capacity to lift up to 1,000- or 2,000-pound loads. Each cable pick-up point can be located on the over-stage grid by itself, or grouped together with others synchronously to lift larger loads. The software system is flexible and can be modified or reprogrammed. The point hoist system is accessible by hand-carry remotes, which stagehands use to operate the hoists.

Specialty Video Components

Auerbach + Associates was also asked to design a number of specialty video components including three slender robotic video camera pylons that telescope up and down, enabling the Church to broadcast live events with minimal sight line intrusion to the pulpit. Video cameras are mounted on the triangular pylons, which are remotely-controlled from the broadcast camera control suite. To enhance visual communication, two 29'-0" wide by 21'-0" tall video screens hang on either side of the rostrum and can be quickly withdrawn into the ceiling when they are not needed. In addition to these components, Auerbach + Associates, working with Bill Klages, designed the grid system, circuit layout, and lighting control for an auxiliary television studio. This studio is used for preproduction work, instructional video and other video productions as required on a daily basis.

The Proscenium Theatre

The 911-seat proscenium theatre is located in the northwest corner of the building and will be used for training, performances and Church-sponsored events. The development of this space was prompted by the need to house the Promised Valley Players in a new structure. The small theatre is conceived as a very intimate legitimate theatre that is also equipped as a high tech video and presentation venue. The small theatre is linked to every electronic system of the Conference Center, enabling direct control of the systems necessary to operate singly or as an extension to the auditorium.

The stage is large enough for the most elaborate stage productions and is equally equipped to serve as a small worship space for overflow sessions of General Conference. Tie lines enable this space to be used as a simultaneous translation or American Sign Language presentation facility together with any activity in the larger space.

Scenery handling is provided for this fully-rigged stage house by a 75-foot high grid. There are 61 permanent counterweighted line sets, and a lighting control system with 608 dimmers, which is integrated with the building-wide Ethernet-based lighting control network.

A full complement of stage draperies is provided, complete with a custom fabric main curtain, masking, cyclorama and rear projection screen.

The stage is fully trapped and has a fully resilient dance floor. There is an orchestra pit large enough for 35 musicians with a pit lift that can reconfigure the stage front to be a pit, an apron, or to provide additional seating.


AUERBACH GLASOW Press Release