Orange Coast College, Speech Arts Building

Orange Coast College, Speech Arts Building

Neutra and Alexander’s design for the Orange Coast College Speech Arts Building resulted in a large complex that included an auditorium, ancillary stage production areas, band and orchestra rooms, other practice rooms, and dressing areas. The distinctive auditorium, shaped like a clipped ellipse, was the firm’s most successful building on the campus. Audience members arrived at the auditorium via a long outdoor walkway sheathed in translucent panels which ran at a tangent to the building. Inside, the auditorium was designed to be a flexible space; it had a pair of revolving stages and two side stages, could be reoriented to serve as a theatre in the round, and included adjustable and removable seating platforms. The stage could also be opened to an outdoor amphitheater through massive motor-driven doors.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 270.