Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Wofford College: Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts

  • 04/01/18
Wofford College

PHOTOS © 2017 DERRICK SIMPSON–MCMILLAN PAZDAN SMITH ARCHITECTURE

Wofford College’s Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts is designed to enhance the student experience of a private liberal arts campus while serving the larger community from the edge of downtown Spartanburg, SC. McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture designed the 60,000-square-foot facility to house academic programs in theatre arts, visual arts, and art history, as well as a museum home for Wofford’s permanent collection.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing fills the art studios with natural light, creates openness, and connects with the outdoors. Two custom-made glass sculptures by internationally renowned artist Dale Chihuly grace both the campus entrance lobby and the public entrance lobby, creating an inspired atmosphere for the student gallery, performance hall, and permanent museum spaces. An outdoor sculpture garden and the artistic material choices of white brick and cast stone, metal with copper tones, and glass set the building off from the traditional architecture of the campus.

The 325-seat performance hall features a 2,600-square-foot stage with high-performance theatrical lighting, rigging, and audiovisual systems. Acoustic performance was studied through detailed angle-measurement models and is controlled by a highly adjustable acoustic baffle system. The adjacent 100-seat black box theater features a custom suspension grid and serves as a laboratory for set lighting design education. Dressing rooms, additional seminar classrooms, faculty offices, a costume design studio, and a scenery construction woodshop support the theaters’ purpose as a “teaching theater.”

Housed in the same facility, the college’s newly launched Studio Art program is sized to accommodate 20-25 students at easels or drawing benches. The adjacent Ceramics Studio includes large work tables, potters’ wheels, and a kiln on the shared covered porch. Attention to fumes in the studios and temperature and humidity in the museum and art storage spaces required intense air quality protocols throughout the facility, including numerous dedicated units, tightly managed control systems, and careful attention to off-gassing of materials.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management April 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Massachusetts K–12 District Selects Architect for New Junior High

    Swansea Public Schools in Swansea, Mass., recently announced that it has selected Finegold Alexander Architects to design a new junior high school for the district, according to a news release. The firm will create the Feasibility Study and Schematic Design for Joseph Case Junior High School after a lengthy selection process by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA).

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • Zurn Elkay Releases 2025 Sustainability Report

    Zurn Elkay Water Solutions recently announced the release of its annual sustainability report, according to a news release. The 2025 report discusses the organization’s efforts to maintain good environmental stewardship and the solutions provided in helping customers meet sustainability goals.

  • North Carolina District Completes New Elementary School

    The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) in Holly Springs, N.C., recently announced that construction on a new elementary school has finished, according to a news release. Rex Road Elementary School measures in at 133,000 square feet and is the fifteenth school that general contractor Balfour Beatty has completed for the district.