TED 2014 started yesterday. The annual talk-fest takes places in Vancouver, British Columbia, this year instead of its regular home in Long Beach, California. Moving the event to a new venue caused it to try something new, namely, building its own 20,000-square-foot theater inside the Vancouver Convention Centre.
“The custom, pop-up theater created by renown New York architect David Rockwell marks an unprecedented foray into designing around the unique experience that is TED, taking into account the needs, desires, and comforts necessary to create the intimate experience TED promises for both speaker and audience,” Shaunacy Ferro wrote for Fast Company. “Most theaters are designed for viewing a two-hour play or a musical performance, an experience that differs vastly from listening to speaker after speaker for days at a time, and one that requires a host of different design considerations.”
Ferro’s article features interviews with Rockwell and TED curator Chris Anderson about the design, seating, and portability of the theater.
“The theater was built nearby in more than 8,000 structural timber pieces created with the help of a computer-aided cutting machine, which arrived at Vancouver Convention Center on 50 trucks,” Kate Torgovnick May wrote on the official TED blog. “The theater was designed as individual “boxes” of approximately 10’ x 12’ x 20’, which fit together for easy assembly. Each individual ‘box’ withstands the dynamic forces imposed when moved and, in total, it’s designed to stand up to the normal live/dead loads in any other building.”
Check out the time-lapse video below to see how the theater was created, and please visit Ferro and May‘s articles for more information about the project.
(Image: TED/Rockwell Group)
