The design and construction of a new cultural facility is a unique moment in the life of an arts organization or arts community. It’s a chance to rethink how arts and audiences connect, how works are produced, how thriving ecologies of innovation and meaningful experience are structured and sustained.
But there’s a fascinating tension in cultural facility design between what might be possible with a clean slate, and what our artistic and management traditions tell us will work.
Case in point: the design of the modern box office. I’ve seen more than one brand new performing arts space lately with a box office that looks like an age-old box office — fully enclosed, teller windows, separation glass, stanchions and velvet rope to mark the place to stand in line. They are built in beautiful stone and glass, I’ll admit, but they are nonetheless ossified evidence of an old metaphor: box office as bank.
In the olden days, box offices were centers of cash transactions, requiring high security, complete isolation between tellers, and immovable blast walls between patron and staff. Even though the cash transaction is all but gone for ticket purchases, the metaphor remains: we are secure, we are separate, we are transactional, we don’t trust you…get in line.
Yet if you enter an upscale bank these days, you’ll see a different metaphor at work: sofas, sitting areas, carpeting, countertops rather than teller windows. In some cases, there aren’t tellers at all, just personal financial assistants at desks or tables. The symbolism isn’t intimidation, but personal attention and service. For an example, just check out this bank in Portland, described by its design firm as follows:
Part upscale hotel, part retail (and a little bank), Umpqua’s innovative new store invites customers to read the paper, enjoy a free cup of coffee, surf the Internet, and shop for banking products. While some banks discourage customers from entering a bank branch and other banks compete against the Internet to provide convenience and speed, Umpqua’s new store inspires and encourages its customers to relax and take their time when making financial decisions.
So, why can’t a cultural facility team rethink its ticket office in a similar way? The design consultants will likely point at the current box office staff, saying ”we tried to show them a new way to conceive of their sales area, but they are luddites.” The current box office staff will likely point at the expensive design consultants, saying, ”they offered systems that would break, that weren’t tested, and that cost an arm and a leg to build and operate…we’re running a revenue center here. And we know what works.”
Of course, they are both right. The box office must often be a machine of efficiency, and has important elements of transaction. But, as more patrons buy tickets on-line, and as fewer (if any) use cash, the rigid security and separateness of a ticket sales area isn’t necessary anymore.
Consider, for example, the new Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the admissions area is just a large social space with several long tables. During business hours, these are the membership and ticketing stations. After hours, all equipment is tucked away to make reception space, and the transaction tables become buffets and bars.
Or, even more radical, why have a box office at all? The same functions could be managed by a killer web site, an off-site phone center, and an on-site roving band of service representatives carrying handheld computers and belt-clip portable printers (like this one or others).
I’m not saying that’s the answer. I’m just suggesting that we question the metaphors that shape these buildings (and there are plenty of others worth questioning), before we encode them with stone.
