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From our recording studio in Brooklyn, we make audio that celebrates human creativity, history and the spaces we live to learn about.

We have embarked on a transformation of the Center, continuously considering how to innovate for the future while remaining rooted in the our timeless legacy: culture, community, commerce, and green spaces – all coming together in the heart of the city. 

Hear about history in the remaking.

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Redevelopment

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New York

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There’s something special about every moment you spend at Rockefeller Center. From the historic art and architecture to the Top of the Rock observation deck, you can experience New York in a way that can only happen here.

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Rockefeller Center

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Explore the spirit of innovation and reinvention at the heart of New York City. 

The view from where you now stand might be new in some ways, but it’s probably still familiar. The Rink at Rockefeller center has been a tried and true spot for the holidays since skating first happened here in 1936. In the summertime the open air sunken plaza is the place to be in Midtown. But you might have noticed that the Rink looks a tad different today. 

This construction is part of Rock Center’s ongoing redevelopment. Most redevelopments are about taking great strides toward the future, redesigning an identity. But while taking a step forward, the updates going on behind these barriers is also about giving a nod to Rockefeller Center’s history.

These barriers themselves are a part of that history. Back when this campus was first being built in the 1930s, Rock Center came up with a plan to welcome New Yorkers to the site before foundations had even been laid. They built a 100 foot, roofed viewing platform for passersby to come check out the construction- they even put in a suggestion box. These onlookers got a name, too- the Sidewalk Superintendents Club. These clear barriers before you are a nod to this part of Rock Center’s history.

EB Kelly, the Managing Director of Rockefeller Center, can tell it best.

EB Kelly: “Rockefeller Center defines what it means to be New York, it’s where when the world comes to New York and wants to see it, they come here, and… [6.55] this is how New York speaks to the world.” 

Rockefeller Center is an icon, for a whole host of reasons. 

EB Kelly: “There’s an incredible profusion of public space, of plazas…there are so many spaces where you as an individual can engage with greenery, that you can be outside, and that the buildings set back…right you stand next to a skyscraper that goes 50 or 75 stories up with no setback, that can feel a little bit dehumanizing. That’s really the opposite of Rockefeller Center. This is a place where the architecture really enforces that human connection.”
 
Rock Center’s Great Depression-era design is still cutting edge today.

EB Kelly: “I like to think that we have come up with a host of great ideas today in 2021 that are all a function of us being all very creative and having a great team, i think though we need to give credit where credit is due and much of that rests in the origins of what the Center was originally intended and how it was originally conceived.”

Much of the construction going on today is to take Rock Center into the future by going back to its roots. That’s what the mantra on those barriers, “History in the Re-Making,” is getting at. 

When all this is through, you’ll still be able to go down into the sunken plaza from Fifth Ave, like before. But you’ll notice a few changes.

EB Kelly: “There will always be skating, there will always be a Christmas Tree, so let me just start with those things that are sacred....So the physical changes that we’re making to the Rink by opening up the storefronts. So we’re replacing walls of glass but that are not operable that you can’t open and some that are just stone we’re replacing them with glass that can be fully opened.”

EB Kelly: “Our hope in doing this is to restore that original vision and to enable this beautiful entry into Fifth Avenue as you walk along the shops in the Channel Gardens down the steps and really feel you’re welcomed down into the Concourse.”

The glass doors around the Rink will be good not only for circulation, but for sight-seeing as well. Before, fine dining lay just behind the glass down in the Concourse. Only people eating at those restaurants could get the best views of the Rink. But when the redevelopment is finished, anyone walking through the Concourse will have access to those views. In EB’s words, 

EB Kelly: “You’ll be able to press your nose right up against the glass and see that skating.”

In the summertime the Rink will be gone, and the outdoor area transformed into a lush plaza for meet-ups, dining, and soaking in the Midtown sunlight.

EB Kelly: “There’s a vision of having wisteria that will be planted in pots in the corners of the Rink and then connected all around so really making you feel like you’re surrounded by greenery…  I’d love for the idea that Prometheus or the base of the Channel Gardens becomes a spot where New Yorkers want to meet one another because they’re about to embark on a great evening that they will be able to do entirely at Rockefeller Center.”

We all know Rockefeller Center is an icon. But EB hopes that this redevelopment can show New Yorkers that it’s so much more than that- it’s a space that’s alive and evolving even today.

“It is my hope at the end of this exercise that New Yorkers are reintroduced to Rockefeller Center.”

EB Kelley: “We think that it’s the heart of New York, making it feel like it’s the beating heart of New York, that there’s life and energy… It’s not a place for the special few, but it’s a place that makes those who come here feel special.”

If you’d like to dig deeper into the history and redevelopment of Rock Center, explore the other interviews or check out the guided audio walk download Gesso from the app store on iOS or Android.

English

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The Rink

Snippet

The construction you see around you is a part of an ongoing redevelopment at Rockefeller Center. Here in the Concourse, that redevelopment is the work of the architectural and design firm INC. Adam Rolston is the creative and design director at the firm. 

Adam Rolston: “So at INC we are a vertically integrated hybrid studio, that is what we call ourselves. ANd what that really means is that we are half architects and half designers… and so the name is the mission, Incorporated, architecture and design; those two things incorporated into each other seamlessly.”

 Adam himself has dreamed of being an architect since childhood. 

Adam Rolston: “So my dad was an amateur architect … I was 11…  and I was completely smitten.” “ And I will say, one of the things that my father showed me...was the storefront at Rockefeller Center. He pointed out to me he showed me how the little awnings retract into the bronze storefronts and ya know that’s formative.”

So for Adam, it was a dream come true to get to work on Rockefeller Center. 

“I mean if you love New York City this is one of the icons of New York City it’s also an architecture that is born of and distinctive to New York there’s no other place it could’ve come out of.”

The designers and architects at INC took special care to highlight the uniqueness of Rockefeller Center’s original design even while bringing it firmly into the present day. 

Adam Rolston: “And the way that you build on that is like what I said before you look at the tensions in the project. Like what are you trying to solve here that the spaces aren’t doing right now? What are the limits of that existing context? [18.08] The very first line the ownership group came to us with was to ‘liberate the skating rink.’ [18.16] Before it was kind of relegated or adjacent to the restaurants that were attached to it, and so that meant that very few people got to enjoy the natural light and the view of the Rink. So there was a kind of democratizing of access to the Rink, and the courtyard, and the natural light.”

In service of this mission to democratize the Concourse, to open it to all, the designers began to think of this space as though it weren’t inside at all.

Adam Rolston: “You know there’s nothing more democratic than the street, as it were… and we talked about the street facade and the facade of the retail establishment. So there is a very tailored, very specific facade that wraps all of these flowing spaces, circulation spaces, that unifies the concourse but also creates a street...that unifies and connects you but also gives you the understanding that this is public space.” 

If there’s one word that will sum up the aesthetic of the Concourse once it’s completed, it’s “curvaceous.” 

Adam Rolston: “It’s almost a space without corners, there are no hard corners. All the corners are eased or curved or radiused or rounded to allow for that flow, that spatial flow. Creating in a way one space from 5th Avenue to 6th Avenue.”

But this redevelopment truly stretches from floor to ceiling. Look up above you. Before, the ceilings stopped at 10 feet above the floor. Perhaps that’s what you see now. But what will eventually be there is a raw ceiling, exposing the internal workings of 30 Rock- 

Adam Rolston: “The raw open ceilings are... every era of concrete that you can imagine over the years as this thing got built, steel, exposed steel, sprinkler pipes, terracotta, plaster, all sorts of different original materials.”

Exposing the ceiling also exposed some other features original to the Concourse- skylights. When the Concourse is through, natural light will flood this belowground space, both through the skylights, and through the glass doors that will line most sides of the Rink. 

Though redeveloping the Concourse was a challenge for the architects and designers at INC, at the end of the day, it was all worth it. 

Adam Rolston: “The joy I think is in this context the love of the Center, the deep connection to the city...You know it’s Rockefeller Center. It doesn’t get better than that.” 

If you’d like to dig deeper into the history and redevelopment of Rock Center, explore the other interviews or check out the guided audio walk download Gesso from the app store on iOS or Android.

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ROCKEFELLER CENTER

Redevelopment

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