New Orleans Transforms Landmark Auditorium

Haynes + Associates - New Orleans, LA

"We placed ourselves in the design to see what a game would look like from the seats..."

When the city of New Orleans needed to transform one of their historic treasures into a multi-purpose arena and auditorium, they wanted to visualize what it would look like before construction began. Using ArchiCAD, local architects Haynes + Associates took city officials on a "virtual tour" of the building. The city could see exactly how their money was going to be spent.

The Morris F.X. Jeff Municipal Auditorium, erected in 1930s New Orleans adjacent to the French Quarter, was used for Carnival Krewes Mardi Gras celebrations for 63 years. The city's decision to renovate was an economic one, fueled by the desire to bring more profitable events to the historic facility. The project was to build a regulation hockey rink inside the building flexible enough so that it could be converted back to an auditorium for other uses. According to Paul Haynes, president of Haynes + Associates, the design challenge was the need for versatility. "The building can now go from a hockey rink, to a concert hall, to a basketball court, to a Mardi Gras ball setting in a one-day turnaround." In addition to the rigors of an accelerated schedule, another challenge was to place a modern venue inside a cultural landmark. "It raised a lot of issues concerning how to protect the historic value of the building," Haynes said.

Within a week after winning the project, the auditorium was modeled in ArchiCAD. Renderings were created using Artlantis Render, a ray-trace rendering program, to provide the realistic visualization required by the client. "The visualization allowed us to communicate the effects on the building quickly so they could understand what was going to happen," Haynes said. "Within the first month we were able to generate answers to all of their design questions. We knew what we were showing in ArchiCAD was accurate. In addition to doing construction documents it was a very persuasive and powerful tool for visualization."

Testing the sight lines of the arena in ArchiCAD was another critical step for insuring accuracy. It was important that fans could see each player on the rink from any seat in the arena. "We placed ourselves in the design to see what a game would look like from the seats and could see potential problems immediately," Haynes said. "We ended up taking a whole section of seats out because of this. ArchiCAD helped us to avoid a catastrophe."

3D renderings allowed the city to choose between varied scoreboard styles. Advertising space was also displayed "virtually" so potential advertisers could view banners from different vantages throughout the arena. "ArchiCAD was used as a marketing tool not only for us but for the city as well," Haynes said.

Completed in October of 1997, the newly renovated 200,000 square-foot building features a 5,000-seat arena and is the new home of The New Orleans Brass, a minor league hockey team of the East Coast Hockey League. Concluded Haynes, "This project really led to the rejuvenation of the building, and had a positive impact on people's perception of what New Orleans has to offer."