The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Creativity & Performance is an 86,400 sq ft center designed to foster performances, public gatherings, teaching and international research. The facility with multiuse spaces and two performance venues—including the 700-seat West Stage for large-scale productions and the more intimate 300-seat East Stage—also includes rehearsal studios and teaching spaces, a large public lobby, a café, dressing rooms, technical shops, administrative offices and an outdoor performance yard.

Substantial completion is set for October and the A.R.T. plans to open its doors in early 2027.
Courtesy of American Repertory Theater via Haworth Tompkins and ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge

Because each section of the building had its own function, the team couldn’t take the traditional approach of installing concrete cores before building the structure. Instead, the team divided the building into six self-supporting structural sectors, Ryan says, “Each sector functioned like a mini building during construction, allowing the team to erect portions of the structure independently before tying them together into the full facility.”

This strategic approach “allowed the team to prioritize areas on the project’s critical path—such as the West Stage, the most complex portion of the building and needed to begin early to maintain the overall schedule,” he notes.

The A.R.T project is the sum of more than 2,300 individual pieces that form the building’s structure.
Courtesy of Harvard University Planning and Design

Crews erected each sector sequentially using 1,480 prefabricated glulam members for columns, beams and wind girts, and 890 CLT panels for walls, floors and roofs—sequencing the work like following Lego instructions. To keep the building structurally sound you must “build in that sequence because of the way the loads transfer,” Ryan adds.

Once all six sectors were completed, the team effectively “tied them together to form the single American Repertory Theater facility,” Ryan says.

Substantial completion is set for October and the A.R.T. plans to open its doors on schedule in early 2027.

Crews installed mass timber structural elements around the steel fly tower above the West Stage in April 2025.
Courtesy of Shawmut Design and Construction

Mass Timber Erection

Harvard’s original plan to modernize the A.R.T.’s existing home, the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, morphed into constructing a new facility when the university received a $100 million gift from the Goels in 2019, says Susan Malaab, a senior project manager at Harvard.

Haworth Tompkins, the architect and design lead, and Architectural Resources Cambridge, the architect of record, spent six years designing and planning along with theater and acoustic consultant Charcoalblue. Designing to achieve the Living Building Challenge core accreditation from the International Living Future Institute, the team deployed cross-laminated timber, reclaimed brick and cedar cladding while embracing openness, artistic flexibility and regenerative design that seeks to repair ecological imbalances created by human development, a concept developed by John T. Lyle, a professor of landscape architecture at California State Polytech University.

Fifteen massive trusses—each averaging 70 ft long, 10 ft tall by 10 ft high, and weighing 30,000 lb—were installed as part of the theater’s structure. LeMessurier designed the trusses, including tensile architectural elements. 
Courtesy of Shawmut Design and Construction

A few months after construction began in 2024, the team started erecting the fly tower above the West stage, a steel structure that houses the rigging system that raises background scenery, lights and other stage elements during productions. The team built structural shear walls, elevator cores and stair cores out of cross laminated timber to resist wind and seismic forces.

“These CLT shear walls were highly loaded and required careful detailing to manage the forces while still working with the architectural and construction constraints of the building,” says Simon Gallagher, project manager for Montreal-based Nordic Structures, which designed all connections, and fabricated and installed all the mass timber material.

The A.R.T. is designed with enormous height in many spaces, including wide openings without columns.LeMessurier designed the trusses, including tensile architectural elements.
Courtesy of American Repertory Theater via Haworth Tompkins and ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge

Theater Acoustics

Unlike traditional concrete or masonry construction, lighter, less stiff mass timber allows for the transmission of low-frequency sound more easily. “Wood is not a forgiving material acoustically” says Malaab.

To achieve sound separation between spaces, the Charcoalblue team collaborated with structural engineer, LeMessurier, to find a solution for a reliably stiffer structure, says Eric Magloire, Charcoalblue design principal and acoustician. LeMessurier recommended a shorter structural grid than typically possible with mass timber floor panels to limit vibration and deflection.

The team standardized a structural layout of glulam columns and beams on a 12-ft grid—advantageous spacing for CLT spans given the stringent live-load and vibration criteria required for the studio and rehearsal spaces designed for rhythmic music and dance activities, says Aaron Malone, principal at LeMessurier.

“At the lobby and performance spaces, where longer spans were required, various configurations of hybrid timber–steel trusses were utilized to achieve the necessary spans while maintaining sufficient stiffness to meet floor deflection and vibration criteria,” he says.

Around the perimeter of the West stage an acoustic isolation joint provides structural sound isolation from the first floor to the roof. It provides “a complete 2 in of structural sound isolation that mitigates structure-borne noise and flanking noise between the West Stage and its adjacent spaces,” Magloire says.

Due to space constraints, the team recommended installing “a single line of structure” with acoustic-structural isolation connections between the two structures, Magloire adds.

Those connections eliminate rigid structural connections across the acoustic isolation joint separating the West Stage theater from the remainder of the building, Malone says. The connections also employ “structural elastomeric bearing pads to transfer structural loads across the isolation joint while limiting structure-borne noise transmission into the West Stage theater,” Malone explains.

 

MEP Coordination

Because mass timber is manufactured off-site, the team had to fully coordinate and integrate all MEP penetrations during design so components arrived installation-ready, says Andrew Sheridan, Shawmut MEP project manager, “turning what’s traditionally fieldwork into a precise prefabrication process that improves speed, quality, and overall project efficiency.”

Detailed coordination of MEP penetrations for services, lighting fixtures, and HVAC and plumbing through the mass timber system was also critical for acoustic design, Magloire says.

“In performing arts facilities, sound isolation assemblies rely heavily on maintaining continuous layers of mass and airtightness,” he says.

Coordinating acoustic design precisely with the architectural, structural and building services teams is also key to avoid the risk of penetrations compromising the acoustic separation between spaces, Magloire adds. “Even relatively small openings can create flanking that that significantly reduces the performance of otherwise robust assemblies,” he says.

One sustainability innovation requiring extensive MEP coordination involved the installation of natural ventilation. Beneath the first-floor slab, where “100,000 cu ft per minute of air needs to travel from the intakes down on the west side of our building through concrete air passageways up through four grills and out through the tower at the top of the project,” Sheridan says.

The complex design utilizes the shoulder seasons and “natural heat of the electrical within the theaters” for heat recovery, he adds.

Following MEP coordination, the team completely closed in the structure, and managed heavy start up with the MEP systems, he says.