New World Center, Performing arts center in Miami Beach, United States.
The New World Center is a concert hall in Miami Beach designed by Frank Gehry. Its glass-and-white-plaster exterior is mostly rectangular, with a tall glass curtain wall crossed by white mullions and two rounded white roof forms above. Inside, a sky-lit atrium leads to a steeply banked hall of 756 seats, where no seat is more than thirteen rows from the stage.
The New World Symphony, founded in 1987, moved into this hall in January 2011, leaving its previous home in the Lincoln Theater. Frank Gehry designed it with acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, with whom he had worked on Walt Disney Concert Hall. The 100,641-square-foot building cost about $160 million, funded by $15 million from Miami Beach, $25 million from Miami-Dade County, private donations and the Lincoln Theater sale.
The New World Symphony is a training academy for young musicians, and its artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas pushed for the building's public outreach and digital technology. Free "wallcasts" project select performances onto a 7,000-square-foot outdoor wall, with QR codes giving the outside audience details about each work. The Miami Herald noted the films, video art and wallcasts created a sense of community in the park's first year.
The building sits one block north of Lincoln Road in South Beach. The SoundScape park beside it hosts free wallcasts at least twice a month during the season; QR codes shown on the projection wall give details on the work. No seat inside is more than thirteen rows from the stage.
The 7,000-square-foot projection wall on the SoundScape park side is described as the largest permanently installed projection surface in North America. Its 155 individually tuned speakers carry the sound, and QR codes shown during performances let the outdoor audience read about the work being played.
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