2016 Directory

36 WYOMING ARCHITECTURE .16 | www.aia-wyoming.org F ive or six people came on the tour of the Mars Theater at the WYO in Sheridan, including the WYO’s new (awesome) Director, Erin Butler. We discussed the packing-in of the many functions surrounding the new Black Box theater, which is the main element of the building, and looked at how the previous exiting route from the theater had to be redesigned through the new spaces. We looked at how the previously almost non-existent right wing of the WYO was expanded into a useable space by creating a very large hole in the original stage house wall and discussed the associated new rigging system and the complex ac- cess to the counterweights. The front lobby of the WYO was expanded by the addition of a contiguous lobby on the Main St. side of the Black Box theater, with a new accessible entry from the sidewalk. The Black Box area itself is 38’ x 45' in plan, and 17’ to the bottom of the catwalk that goes all around the space. In the central area the black box is about 25’ high, with a 6’ x 6’ lighting grid at about 20’ above the theater floor. Because of its variety of entrances and exits, as well as a surrounding curtain system about 4’ from the theater’s walls, it is configurable for a wide variety of seating/ performance arrange- ments. We discussed how the acoustic treatment of the space’s walls and ceilings absorb rather than reflect sound, so sound sources are direct from the production location to the listeners’ ears, rather than any bounced sound other than from the floor. This is true for both amplified and un-amplified sound. There was additional discussion, questions, and answers, but this covers some of the highlights. b National Architecture Week Sheridan The M&M Ice Rink tour lasted about an hour, and had six attendees. The group was very curious about the mechanical systems that operated the building which is typically out of site for the public. We were able to engage them in the process and complexities of how the building was built around the existing systems and condenser building and they were curious about what it took to deliver the project in budget and on-time. In the photo the ice rink manager, Dave Lawson, is demonstrating the figure skating training harness.