For the Gamers: I Built a Performing Arts Center in Fortnite!

Brian Nabors
Dec 3
10 min read

Updated: Dec 9

So...

For those of you who don't know...

Before I dedicated my life to music, I was SURE I was going to be an architect. In middle school (2002-ish), my mom bought me my first architecture rendering software and I began making builds from about the age of 11. The houses were nice, but I’m certain they were NOT up to code 😄. I was in the Mu Alpha Theta Math Honor Society in high school and began my pursuit of the profession by first being enrolled in drafting courses, followed by a Saturday morning architecture training program in downtown Birmingham. We studied historical & modern structures (gothic style churches, office towers, etc.) and participated in hands-on building projects (light fixtures, etc.).

Naturally, my obsession with scoring music/piano training lead me to drop the program all together as binders and binders of music kept on piling up at my parents house. Plus, getting up at 6:30 A.M. on a few Saturdays out of the month was beginning to be a HARD NO for me! I don't even remember if I told these folks that I was dropping out. 😆 Look-a-here, at that point, it was "music or die" for me! 🙌🏾

Nevertheless, my love of architecture never wavered and I was heavily inspired by architects like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid well into my music composition studies. I remember being absolutely floored visiting the Contemporary Arts Center (Zaha Hadid was the architect!) in downtown Cincinnati during my graduate studies at CCM. At the time, I was even enrolled in an intermedia course for composers and artists. I was paired in a group with a graphic designer and visual artist. We presented our final project at an exhibition in the CAC's black box theatre. It was awesome. I started to compare the various similarities between music & architecture and became entranced by the complex formalaic & timbral structures in composers such as Iannis Xenakis and others. This, combined with my lifelong LOVE of video games, converted my once prospective profession into a really fun, creative outlet.

Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) by Zaha Hadid, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Walt Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry, Los Angeles, CA, USA

I've always adored video games with any kind of creative mode: WWE "create a wrestler," Tony Hawk Pro Skater "create a skate park," etc. I eventually was able to stoke my architecture fix when I got into The Sims (I have some pretty gnarly house builds too...but that's for another post!). I got into the online battle royale game Fortnite in the last semester of my doctorate in 2019. I had a LOT of free time then, as my enrollment at CCM only consisted of orchestral conducting, dissertation credits, my DMA recital, and composition lessons. I was home around 11am on Monday & Wednesdays and had generally short days during the week. One of my best friends showed me Fortnite's Creative Mode and I went CRAZY. We built ALL KINDS of ridiculousness. I soon after got a harebrained idea to do something I hadn't seen any other creator in Fortnite do: design a performing arts center!

It would combine me and my friend's love of concert music, my love of architecture and our shared love of amazing concert spaces. Thus, the Fortnite Center for the Performing Arts was born!

First Attempt

After months of work, I completed my first attempt near the end of spring 2019. In terms of scale, it was HUGE. I had 4 concert halls (each with green rooms), a rehearsal room, staff lounge, marketing and artist admin offices, bathrooms, dining service kitchen and even a maintenance/custodian office! It was cool, but it wasn’t the prettiest building. The packs for the materials I used were stylistically all over the place. There were these wild sculpture gardens that didn’t quite make artistic sense…but it was one heck of a battleground.

Here's a few clips from my first attempt!

In terms of gameplay, I made it a war zone for creature battles by placing all of these spawners in random spots on the map! 🤣💀. I hid several chests full of weapons and other life supporting elixirs across the complex. It was HILARIOUS being chased like Scooby and the gang by a mob of creatures in various sizes across concert stages, down aisles and up in balconies! I even made a spooky version that had black fog nearly make it impossible to see very far in front of you. So, as you searched desperately for weapon chests to grab something to defend yourself, big, bulbous ghouls would POP out of the fog! 👻🧟‍♂️

WELP…During the Spring 2025, I felt the itch to try again, and this time I wanted to take my time and utilize galleries and various items to make as realistic of a build as I possibly could.

Since those old school days, my career has afforded me the honor of visiting incredible venues. This time I had a lot of inspiration for this build!

Fortnite Center for the Performing Arts (2025)

Island Code (for the Fortnite gamers who'd like to take a visit!):

1447-1942-9149

...And here we have it! The new and improved Fortnite Center for the Performing Arts: Home of the Fornite Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. 😄

We'll explore every part of the exterior and interior of the complex.

Overview

Over a period of 4 months (April-July 2025), I carefully crafted a performing arts complex consisting of 3 performance spaces, a rehearsal and chamber music center, an outdoor garden complex and office wings for both marketing and artistic administration departments. Unfortunately, Fortnite has a memory limit of 100,000 units of objects/props in order to publish, so all of the special supplemental spaces I had planned had to get scrapped. Since the game allows you to keep building beyond 100,000 units, I saved a previous version that has an upstairs restaurant, bar & lounge spaces—plus a gaming center with an arcade, pool & ice hockey tables ('cause, WHY NOT? 😆). This version is what Fortnite classifies as an artistic build, so no playable elements in this one—just an artistic imagination at play.

Building a structure like this in-game is an exciting, yet slow & grueling process.

Every design pack—carefully chosen.

Every wall, section of flooring and every light—carefully, individually placed.

There is an endless amount of materials and props to choose from, so you really have to possess quite the imagination to bring your creations to life! Hobbies like this have shown me something profound—I do everything in my life in the same way that I build a composition—imagination, design, structure, form, and execution.

Exterior Structure & Design

For the exterior design, I focused on a unified modern look for the front end of the complex. Since Fortnite doesn't have glass as a material, I used steel gates in all the places that would be glass in reality. While looking through the galleries & prefabs, I also discovered this incredibly gorgeous Japanese pack and decided have the largest concert space and garden carry this theme.

In terms of design influence, you'll notice the long arches I snagged from the castle pack. I was going for a very "Lincoln Center-Esque" feel. They permeate throughout the 1st floor of the complex, from the foyer to the largest concert space. The coolest feature about the foyer is the color gradient spiked ceiling! I first made the spikes by taking single ribbed vaulted roof platforms that had points on the end of each corner and combined them in consecutive rows of 6 to form the spikes. I then placed EACH LIGHT individually by grid snapping them to fit inside each spike. The trickiest part of this was choosing one slightly different color variant after another to ensure a smooth set of gradients across the length of the foyer. Here's a video walkthrough of the entrance/foyer:

Fortnite Center for the Performing Arts - Entrance/Foyer walkthrough

Performance Venues

the FCPA has 3 main performance venues: Skep Hall, the Fortnite Symphony Choral and Opera Center, and the largest performance space—Brotherhood Concert Hall.

Skep Hall

I designed Skep Hall in honor of one of my closest friends who's a violinist/rapper extraordinaire. He has a strong love of Hip-Hop culture, music production and cars, so I made him a Hip-Hop inspired black box theatre with 3 levels, line array speakers, the ultimate DJ/mic setup and cars hanging from the ceiling (...wouldn't advise that in real life, but hey! 😅).

As you walk down the hall, you pass a row of muscle cars, each color coded with a reactive equalizer bar to match the main two on the wall of the front entrance. I almost forgot to mention—I have music playing in the upstairs plaza above the foyer of the main entrance to the FCPA. I adjusted the hearing distance so it would trigger all the equalizers throughout Skep Hall—the hall's literally jumping. There's also a bit of fog to enhance the atmosphere!

When you enter the main foyer, you see fluorescent lighting on more graffiti bricks, a semi truck on each side of you, and an 18-wheeler hanging from the ceiling. As you walk up the stairs to the front entrance of the hall, you'll notice I've put common phrases/greetings we use. When you leave and descend, you'll notice cars in chambers and the goodbye phrases we say to one another. One feature that was really fun to build was the hall's exterior! On the roof of the building, each section has a set of pillars of differing lengths to simulate a set of equalizer bars in a digital audio workstation. I also sized/snapped 2 large music reactive square fluorescent lights to wrap around the exterior of the hall. They also change color to the music being played in the plaza above the complex entrance.

Skep Hall Walkthrough

The Fortnite Symphony Choral and Opera Center

Located on the east side of the complex is the Fortnite Symphony Choral and Opera Center. The theme for its concert hall came from this neat ancient Grecian-esque warrior empire pack that I found. The flaming chalices, bubbling cauldrons, torch lights and channeled green floor liquids, give this performance space a very underworld aesthetic.

There are several seating areas, all connected by a system of hallways on each side and beneath the hall. In the center of the hall are amphitheater risers that I painstakingly resized😭😄 to fit the space. This was one of my favorite spaces to design as it has a lot of symmetrical elements. My least favorite part was adding the lights, but I have to say it was quite worth it! I think it came out pretty cool! Check it out:

Choral & Opera Center Hall Walkthrough

Donohue Rehearsal & Conference Center

Housed above the concert hall of the Choral & Opera Center is the Donohue Rehearsal & Conference Center, named after another one of my close friends. It's accessible by a crosswalk bridge from the upper level of the complex. Inside the center is the Florence Price Rehearsal Studio and the Duke Ellington Chamber Music Center, consisting of the Julius Eastman and Julia Perry Rehearsal Studios.

The center's buildings have foundations only in the middle underneath while the rest of the buildings hang freely. When you walk onto the pathway that outlines the two buildings, it appears as if they're floating.

Brotherhood Concert Hall

The FCPA's largest concert venue, it is shrouded in a stylistic mix of Japanese Samurai culture and historical influence, art deco and a touch of gothic architecture. As you progress down the hallway leading to the main lobby of the concert hall, there is Samurai armor lined in alternating color patterns, hanging scrolls with Japanese artwork, and flaming cauldrons in between support pillars. The gothic ribbed spikes trail from the main foyer of the complex and continue down the center of the hallway, matching the red color scheme. Lit golden panel murals line various parts of the lobby and vestibule leading into the hall.

The hall's interior design is a mix of wood, steel, and brick. It has a big, open window behind the main stage showing the brilliant mountain in the distance. The hall has 3 main levels. Placing all of the seats and lighting the place was TEDIOUS. I did my best 😄. Something I really tried to get right was the proportions from the seating area to the stage—something I thought about in each of the performance spaces. I wanted to ensure that there were really no bad seats in the house! Too bad concerts can't ever happen in here! 😭

I did my best to line the chairs and stools of the orchestra up! I tried to use real string counts and wind placements. 'Close enough, I guess! 😄

There are green rooms with artwork, kitchen stations, full bathrooms, and lounge areas. There is also a promenade and sound room suspended above the hall. The east side of the hall leads to the Takashi Yoshimatsu Gardens.

Brotherhood Hall Walkthrough

Brotherhood Hall Green Rooms & Sound Room Walkthrough

Takashi Yoshimatsu Gardens

Named after one of my absolute favorite composers, Yoshimatsu Gardens was quite enjoyable to put together! The fun part was placing all of the lighting and props. The most TEDIOUS part was getting the pond built! The water actually comes in the form of individual cubes that you have to put together 🫠. The rocks are all separate, so you have to shape them one by one. The pond and the bridge came first, followed by foliage, railings, lanterns in the sand and on the rocks, and lights on the bridge. Finally, the design of the gazebo and deck. The roofing on the gazebo has VERY HARD because I needed to study the shapes of the Japanese roof pieces in order to build it correctly! It took about 1-1/2 hours to get right. 😭

Yoshimatsu Gardens Walkthrough

Offices and Other Spaces

Fortnite Symphony Marketing & Artistic Administration Offices

So, I even made 2 office wings located above the main foyer of the complex. They include lounge/waiting areas, board rooms, and staff lounge + kitchen. As you've seen already, I've named many spaces after composers I love, but check out the celebrity names of the staff and artistic admin positions! 😂

God of Gaming Plaza & Tōru Takemitsu Promenade

Tōru Takemitsu Promenade was named in honor of the timbrally gifted composer. The walkway stretches from the edge of the plaza, through Brotherhood Concert Hall and high around its rear exterior offering incredible views of the mountains, ocean and complex at large.

God of Gaming Plaza is a musically active space between the 2 office wings of the FCPA. The large light panels on the walls change color and react rhythmically to the music. The ground is also lined with active color coded pathways. I added some cool signage from a city/business pack as well.