Crimped and folded like the tectonic plates of the nearby Papago and Camelback Mountains, the roof that tops the Tempe Center for the Arts provides the facility with its signature element. Made of concrete over metal deck and supported by exposed tubular trusses, the iconic roof shelters the collection of programmatic elements that compose the $67.6 million center, including a 600-seat proscenium theater, a 200-seat studio theater, and a 3,500-square-foot gallery. The architects, Barton Myers Associates of Los Angeles, and local firm Architekton, conceived these as discrete volumes, each with its own roof below the enveloping structure.

This “box within a box” system serves an acoustical function, with the outer roof providing the first line of defense against the noise of jets on their way to and from Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport, only 2 miles away from the building’s site at the edge of Tempe’s Town Lake, says Peter Rutti, Barton Myers senior associate. The outer roof’s peak, about 100 feet above grade, is supported by a series of steel columns that sits on the concrete perimeter walls of the main theater fly tower. At the base of the columns are laminated rubber-and-steel-plate bearing pads. These isolators allow transfer of gravity loads but mitigate transfer of lateral loads induced by airborne vibration into the performance spaces, explains structural engineer Bruce Danziger, associate principal in the Los Angeles office of Arup.