The new event plaza connects the site for the first time with the River Walk’s network of walkways along the San Antonio River, positioned one-story lower than the streets of downtown.
As night falls and the River Walk transitions into a festival-like atmosphere, embedded LEDs are choreographed with the evening’s performance. The solution-an all-encompassing metallic veil-sculpturally expresses and celebrates the cultural life of contemporary San Antonio with references to the filigreed forms of Spanish Colonial ironwork, the delicate lace of festival costumery and the filtered daylight of the River Walk landscape. The diverse program expansion called for a grand, unifying design gesture, combining new and old architectural components. While retaining the Municipal Auditorium’s treasured historic façade, the Tobin Center weaves a new 183,000-square foot facility into its framework of public space-including a 1,768-seat main performance hall, a 231-seat studio theater, and a 600-seat event plaza. The aspirations for the renovation/expansion project were threefold: to create a large, flexible, multi-use performance space with acoustics comparable to the world’s finest concert halls to renew the Spanish Colonial style historic building for future generations and to create a vibrant connection between the city’s main cultural venue and the River Walk. Drawing inspiration from San Antonio’s rich vernacular of color, pattern and public celebration, this “performing arts center for everyone” offers a diverse architectural experience capable of continuous transformation in response to changing audiences, uses, and surroundings. Combining one of San Antonio’s most beloved architectural icons with advanced technology to create one of the most flexible multi-purpose performance halls in the United States, the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts embraces the multi-faceted cultural identity of the city with a complex tapestry of form, materiality, light, and landscape.