Eager to foster successful relations between campus and community, the Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center serves as a new Cultural Gateway to Auburn University’s campus. Promoting transparency through design, warm interior tones of lobby gathering spaces are lightly veiled by a faceted curtain wall, reminiscent of a drawn stage curtain. A welcome presence of the building’s facade is further heightened by wood-toned canopies connecting interior to exterior, with oversized ceiling fans alluding to architectural traditions of a southern porch.

Equipped with motorized acoustics and an adjustable proscenium, theater patrons inside the 1200-seat multi-purpose hall are exposed to a diverse group of world-class performances in theater, music, and dance. Requiring a large spatial volume to deliver superior natural acoustics and lengthy reverberation times created, the Auditorium’s acoustically transparent sidewalls shrink the perceivable scale of the hall to create intimacy for a smaller audience, while programmable LED lighting within the chambers hint at the presence of a larger architectural identity. In additional to the main hall, a 350-seat flexible outdoor venue for community theater and concert performances borders the 5,000-seat performance lawn, sited within undisturbed landscape backdropped by three large existing Pecan trees.