Sonoma Academy Performing Arts Center | Santa Rosa, California

The 27,000-sq.-ft. Sonoma Academy Performing Arts Center features a main theater with four hundred seats, mezzanine balconies, an orchestra pit, a complete catwalk system, and professional sound, audio-visual and lighting control. Back-of-house features include a second actors studio performance space, green room, costume and changing rooms, and scene shops.

Undoubtedly the most sophisticated and professional-grade high school theater in California’s North Bay Area, several innovative elements and materials were incorporated into the PAC. To achieve structural, architectural and sustainability benefits, the roof of the main floor, along with the mezzanine and surrounding spaces, were constructed with cross-laminated timber (CLT) supported by a steel frame. To capitalize on the beauty of CLT, the sought to expose as much as possible. To do so, the project team spent significant effort hiding most of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems. For example, the lobby is set on a hidden raised access floor, with all mechanical ductwork routed below the flooring.

The project's overarching challenge was integrating the building’s intricately curved design into the site’s topography. Sonoma Academy’s campus is comprised of 34 acres surrounded by 1,000 acres of protected open space adjacent to Santa Rosa’s Taylor Mountain Regional Park. The new performing arts center completes a circle of buildings that embraces the central campus, with rolling hillsides as the backdrop.

Essentially, the project team was tasked with building a theater with no straight lines onto the side of a 14-foot hill. Constructing the PAC on the site’s sloped hillside posed a significant safety challenge. This required a complex foundation and extensive vertical concrete walls to support the building, creating a high hazard potential.

The early uses of Virtual Design and Construction allowed for the early identification of potential safety hazards. This information was used in the scheduling and sequencing of work to ensure trade partners had ample space to perform their tasks. The team installed a large scaffold platform supported off the catwalk steel that spanned the entire seating area of the theater to provide a safe work platform for catwalk and ceiling rough in. This also protected workers below and allowed critical path activities to occur in the seating bowls.

Collaboration was key in successfully constructing the building’s intended curved and sloped design elements into the site's layout. In planning the configuration, the team relied heavily on the project’s theatrical consultant’s expertise. The Shalleck Collaborative was able to look at the design and make adjustments, such as rotating the building 90 degrees to allow for an easier placement into the hillside. Significant use of building information modeling (BIM) was critical in modeling the building’s foundation before construction began, and the team remained in constant contact updating drawings and plans based on this information.