Diamond and Schmitt Architects Incorporated
The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts is Canada’s first purpose-built opera house. Acclaimed by music critics, performers and patrons alike, it now ranks with the best opera houses in the world. Its architecture is welcoming and democratic, designed to embrace and engage the city around it, making accessible an art form that has long been considered elitist.
A four-storey, transparent City Room faces University Avenue, the city’s ceremonial boulevard, encouraging the public to experience the artistic life of the building. Its open, innovative design, with its stunning glass staircase, celebrates the audience and the city that surrounds it. The va et viens of patrons to the venue, the processions to and from one’s seats, the animated talk during intermission, in short the societal dance that surrounds a performance, are elemental to the art and engaging to passersby.
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