How Patrick Larsen's career has held two opposite design briefs in mind at the same time — stadium-scale spectacle that reads from the back row, and broadcast sets built to vanish behind the story.
NBC News' Education Nation, Rockefeller Center — the Emmy-winning broadcast set. Production design by Patrick Larsen.
I've spent two decades holding two opposite briefs in mind at the same time. A stadium ceremony has to read for the person at the back. A broadcast set has to read for a single camera and then get out of the way of the story.
They pull in opposite directions, and I've never been able to give one of them up.
Education Nation, NBC News (New York, 2011) — the in-the-round audience set at Rockefeller Center. Production design by Patrick Larsen.
What each one wants
A live set has to land from a hundred metres. Height, scale, a clear silhouette. A broadcast set is the opposite. Every surface tuned for the lens, the cabling hidden, nothing competing with the presenter. One is loud. The other is quiet.
You can't design them with the same instinct. You have to keep two different definitions of "good" in your head and switch between them.
CTV's Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics broadcast studio — Olympic-ring chandelier above a glass-walled set overlooking Canada Place. BDA Gold winner. Production design by Patrick Larsen.
What broadcast taught me
I came up in broadcast. Education Nation at NBC, the Vancouver 2010 set for CTV, work on Piers Morgan Tonight at CNN, Rio 2016 and Wimbledon for the BBC. TV teaches you a discipline live work doesn't. The compliment you're after is the audience not noticing the set at all.
I carry that into every stadium I draw.
CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight — the BDA Silver-winning broadcast set. Patrick Larsen contributed as senior designer at Jack Morton Worldwide.BBC Sport's Rio 2016 Olympic broadcast set — a curved sofa and circular desk overlooking Copacabana Beach. Production design by Patrick Larsen.
Why they feed each other
Broadcast keeps a stadium clean — no rigging on show, every cable thought about. Live work keeps a TV set from going flat — it remembers that a room has scale and a person has to feel it. My whole portfolio sits between those two instincts. Design for the back row and the camera, and try not to let either of them see you working.
