Gammage Memorial Auditorium, Performing arts center in Tempe, United States.
Gammage Memorial Auditorium is a 300-foot-long, 250-foot-wide performing arts center on the ASU Tempe campus, its round roof carried by fifty concrete columns. The tan concrete facade has a row of deep arched openings with scalloped upper edges between plain vertical columns, and twin pedestrian ramps 200 feet long run from the north and east sides to the parking lot. The house seats 3,017 across main floor, grand tier and balcony, with a proscenium stage 64 feet wide and a maple floor.
The building draws from an earlier architectural concept originally conceived for an opera house project in Iraq. Construction finished in 1964, making it one of the architect's final realized works.
The building is named for Grady Gammage, Arizona State University president from 1933 to 1959, who commissioned it. Its opening night on September 18, 1964, featured The Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. The auditorium also hosted the funeral of Senator Barry Goldwater in 1998 and a 2004 presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry.
The building is fully accessible with facilities for people with disabilities and a special sound system for hearing-impaired guests. Wide pedestrian ramps connect the parking areas directly to the main entrance.
The round roof rests on fifty concrete columns, and twin pedestrian ramps stretch 200 feet from the north and east sides to the parking lot. Wright's design reworks a circular opera house he drew for Baghdad before King Faisal II's 1958 assassination ended that project.
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