Built up on a plinth, and clad in relentless swaths of travertine, Lincoln Center was once considered by many to be a remote acropolis of culture. A half century after it was built, the iconic mid-20th-century performing arts compound is coming down to earth, or at least to the surrounding streets of New York City’s Upper West Side.

The podium and stone remain. But a whimsical glass pavilion — the latest phase in the eight-year redevelopment of the 16-acre campus by collaborating firms Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DSR) and FXFOWLE — is engaging theatergoers, tourists, and the neighboring community with a first-rate restaurant, state-of-the-art film center, and a rare patch of urban green on its roof.

Indeed, this populist intervention in many ways culminates the team’s efforts to revitalize the complex and its intersecting thoroughfare, West Sixty-Fifth Street, a master plan initiative responsible for the previously completed Alice Tully Hall renovation[RECORD, June 2009], and the Juilliard School extension [RECORD, February 2011]. This is largely due to the comprehensive 40,000-square-foot project’s strategic location on the site, as well as the critical programmatic elements the architects were required to incorporate into it: cultural, public, and private.

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