The Perelman Performing Arts Center building is windowless; a 129,000-square cube in terracotta and white. Its branding, on the other hand, has colour in spades; searing orange, pink and yellow break through the system at multiple points. While the PAC building, a cultural space at ground zero, could afford, and needed to be simple, enclosed, reverent almost, the branding had to “radiate mass appeal”.
“Balancing the historical exclusion of the [performing arts] category with a symbolic site many hadn’t visited since 9/11 were real barriers to a warm welcome,” says Porto Rocha, the design studio behind the work. After the studio received the brief in 2022, it set out to balance reverence for the location with the vision for cultural “renewal” Michael Bloomberg had for the World Trade Centre.
Architecture, not branding, is typically the first discipline to respond to challenges like this. Porto Rocha had to come up with a visual counter for a building that had been 22 years of development – a perfectly symmetrical structure with 5,000 marble tiles that glows on the inside. “Over many site visits across the building’s construction — before, during, and after completion — we intimately connected with its architecture,” says Joseph. “This presented both a well of inspiration and tension that we mined to create the brand identity. The grand marble cube exterior sat atop steps you need to climb to enter was as inspiring as it was intimidating.”
