New York’s “Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts” was built in the late 1950s and even today is still one of the largest and best-known arts centres worldwide. The complex with its 12 music and theatre institutions plus the world-famous Metropolitan Opera was fully refurbished and redeveloped between 2008 and 2009. Two long canopies restructure the streetscape here and the entrance situation for Avery Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater. These striking roofs invite passers-by to enter the world of the arts.

Transparency and lightness dominate the designs for the two glass canopies. Architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro have carefully integrated two elegant steel “sculptures” into the architecture of Avery Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater. Two slightly outward-tilting steel beams just over 27m long are supported on a central Y-column. A circular hollow section passing right through the steel beams joins these to the building at one end, and together with the Y-column, which is rigidly bolted to the roof of the basement car park, ensures the necessary stability. Suspended below both beams are large-format panes of glass – 12 four-ply laminated safety glass panes each measuring 4.30m x 2.30m. Each one of these weighs almost 1.5t. They are held at the corners with point fixings. Subsequently bonded together with a two-component injection compound to form a load-transferring connection, glass and steel form a structurally effective composite.