The Places that Inspire

Sitting in an office that overlooks Playhouse Square, Chris Loeser, XXX of the DLR Group, can watch people interacting with his work daily, at one of the most iconic spaces in the region.  

"There's not many careers where there's some built object at the end of the day, where there's something that's tangible that you can experience and live in and work in or be able to experience,” Loeser said.  He noted how rewarding it is to be able to see the fruits of your labor, and also to witness other people interacting with the buildings he’s helped design. But Playhouse Square is just one of the notable arts institutions that Kent State University architecture alumni have worked on.  

“We've had such really amazing opportunities in Cleveland specifically, working with incredible institutions like the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall and Blossom Music Center, Playhouse Square, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Museum of Art and there's so many more,” Loeser said of his firm, the DLR Group, where more than XX people on staff come from Kent State.  

Mark Morris, XX at DLR Group, recently worked on the major renovation project at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  

"One thing too that's super cool about that project is that all there's an age group of everybody from Cleveland who gets to go there. It's third graders, it’s fourth graders. And my kids have been there multiple times. It's something that I'm really happy about bringing my family there and showing them and that was a real point of pride,” Morris said. 

Historic Preservation

Playhouse Square is a set of historic theaters, dating back more than 100 years. Working on those buildings requires an appreciation of the history and stewardship of space, while considering modern needs and the technology needed to put on big productions now.  

“It's our civic duty to make sure that we are passing these buildings onto the next generation so that these buildings can continue in perpetuity,” Loeser said.  

After working on the buildings, Loeser found even more appreciation for the shows he’s seen there since.  

“I really love historic buildings ... You never know what you're going to find when you start to open up walls,” Loeser said. 

Matt Janiak, XX of DLR Group, has worked on Playhouse Square throughout his career at the firm, which has a 50-year relationship with the arts complex. They did the historic restorations of the Ohio, State and Palace theaters. Janiak worked on the Hannah Building and the Ohio Lobby, which is one of his favorite projects in the Allen Theater.  

“We've had over 50 years of experience working with Playhouse Square and then to have touched all those buildings is another heartwarming, important part of my career because we live in the neighborhood,” Janiak said.

"I think about when we did the lobby in the Ohio Theater and if you can imagine, the main lobby was very plain. All the beautiful architecture wasn't there, wasn't left. Our team came in after a conversation with president at that time and said, ‘Do you think we can do this? Can we bring it back? Here's the photograph,’ Janiak recalled.  

Janiak said they sat above the ceiling looking at the only historic portion left and asked if it would be possible to replicate the photograph. The president said they could with the right partners and they found those partners and figured it out.  

Josh Haney, title at DLR Group, has worked on several cultural institutions in Northeast Ohio, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame renovations, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton and numerous higher education projects bridging cultural performing arts and academia, like the Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case Western Reserve.  

Most recently, Haney led the renovation project on the Cleveland Museum of Natural History where he and colleague Mark Morris had to work alongside their team to combine a building celebrating its centennial with a new addition that could set up the next hundred years.  

“Being in a building that was not quite a hundred years old but was still fairly ingrained in the community, people have a sense of history and connection and nostalgia and so it was important to understand what parts of the existing building and the experience would be important to carry through,” Haney said. “And then how could we represent through the new project more articulately the museum's vision and mission and their sense of purpose to the community. How can you design any building to be truly flexible for the future when the future's truly unknowable?”

He said they had to take these ideas into account as they were making design decisions, and to consider that the building will inevitably evolve and change in the coming decades.

"Part of our way to create a cohesive and a holistic looking building was to create a form, an architectural form that wrapped around and really tied the two together and visually when you see it from Wade Oval, you can see that it looks and it appears like one holistic composed building,” Morris explained. “That was a real challenge for us because these parts of the building were from the '70s and the '80s and the '90s and to kind of create a new front door and a new transformative looking building was something that was very important to us. I think we achieved that.”

Janiak said that when thinking about adaptive reuse of buildings requires thinking about the historic nature of buildings and considering how to take them into the future based on how it was built, what its original purpose was, but then considering what a client wants the building to be going forward.  

“Playhouse Square, for instance, the stewardship they take on is we have these beautiful buildings, but we have to put a show on and those shows take a lot of technology to live behind them,” Janiak said.

Building Community

Artistic and cultural institutions are critical for the fabric of a city and for the people who inhabit it. From the children who visit the museums of school field trips, to local community members who feel welcomed into the great hall of a world-class museum, these places are intended to make people feel at home and inspired.  

Accessibility, whether that means financial, ambulatory, or vision and hearing-related are all important when it comes to the design of cultural spaces.  

“A lot of the historic theaters that we work with, they have a pretty sort of menacing edifice and sort of a menace and could be overwhelming as you're entering a space. Thinking about the different perspectives of the community that's coming in and how to cater and experience toward them where they feel comfortable and like this is a space for them is important,” Loeser said.  

In the historic buildings, they’ve had to consider this as part of renovations because accessibility likely wasn’t considered a century ago. When it comes to things like hearing or mobility, it’s something they need to consider ensuring the spaces work for people with different abilities.  

Building cultural understanding is another important aspect of the work, and one of the goals of these types of buildings.  

Morris mentioned how this was taken into consideration for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  

“I got to take some of my experiences of understanding how to work and design for many cultures and really embed it in that project,” Morris said. “One of the very interesting things is that they allow any people to come into the visitor's hall that we designed, free of charge. That really allows people to feel comfortable coming in and it’s really inviting. I feel very proud about creating a design for all people, especially in our region for Cleveland.”

Janiak has worked on a few larger projects outside of the region, as well, including Bethel Woods, a performing arts venue similar to Blossom, but built at the site of Woodstock that recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. But a more recent project is the Ismaili Center in Houston, Texas that was made in partnership with FMA with Farshid Musabi as the design lead and DLR Group serving as the architects and engineers of record in the project.  

“As I grow in my career and expand my experiences, you start to understand what buildings mean to a community,” Jankiak said.

The Ismaeli Center is a singular space that’s built for a community to come together and learn.  

“They pray together, they learn together, they welcome outsiders. Please understand who we are and what we are about as an olive branch to maybe somebody that doesn't know what they do,” Janiak said. “That is what our cultural side can impact when we do projects of that scale.”  

Adapting to New Technology  

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Working with Creatives

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