Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

The Reser serves as a beautiful example of how biophilic design and natural woodwork can be used to connect a performing and visual arts facility to its Pacific Northwest environment. When the City of Beaverton requested that wood be used in public interior spaces, Opsis answered with designs that provided both highly-engineered acoustic performance and artistic expression. Locally sourced Douglas fir—layered sticks and panels in the lobby and vertical cutouts and folds in the theater—creates a complex, ordered pattern that seamlessly integrates acoustical and theatrical systems. The theater’s embracing wood enclosure and performance-based geometry create an intimate relationship between audience and performers. In the lobby, the play of natural light through a linear skylight strategically placed across the interior wall is dynamic and diffuse, evoking the organic crisscross of a beaver dam’s woven structure within this visually calming community space. The lobby’s expansive two-story wood and glass curtain wall presents the Center’s rich wood interior to the surrounding community as a warm and inviting beacon to the arts. 


Watch a short one-minute video of this project, which was selected as a 2023 Wood Design Awards winner. View the full award gallery here.