Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Lafayette College

Arts Plaza

  • 03/01/14
Lafayette College Arts Plaza 

PHOTOS © BARRY HALKIN PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF SPILLMAN FARMER ARCHITECTS

The $1.7-million, 7,000-square-foot Arts Plaza is a raw, open-air space for the arts at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. Spillman Farmer Architects of Bethlehem, PA, served as the project’s architect. The project transformed a former auto-repair facility into a dynamic outdoor teaching space that responds to its natural environment and built context. Designed as an outdoor black box theater, the plaza hosts a wide variety of planned and spontaneous artistic endeavors, including performance art, visual art exhibits and small group musical performances.

The Arts Plaza received a Citation of Merit from The American Institute of Architects, Pennsylvania Chapter.

The project is a distillation of the existing structure. The facility’s concrete platform foundation and timber frame, both salvaged and re-utilized elements of the former building, are complemented by newly introduced masonry and steel. Inside the plaza, the design team repaired and refinished the concrete floor slab. The existing structure and new interventions work together, telling a story of history and use, while creating a new identity for the space.

The Arts Plaza introduces new materials, such as brick and steel, in unconventional ways. They lend a tactile, experiential quality to the space, while honoring the city’s prevailing architecture. The plaza’s masonry walls are clad with clinker brick; a cast off of the brickmaking process, whose curvature and malformations are accented, rather than minimized. The brick’s curvature and imperfections provide texture and counterbalance the well-organized, restrained space.

The selection of humble materials and the repurposing of many elements of the old structure represent Spillman Farmer’s signature design approach of utilizing familiar, utilitarian materials to create extraordinary architectural results. This philosophy steered the design process that has resulted in a dramatic, yet elegant and restrained arts complex that complements the post-industrial urban environment of Easton and provides a new gateway for the college.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • Texas A&M Opens First Building at Fort Worth Campus, Breaks Ground on Research Facility

    The Texas A&M University System marked a major milestone in the development of its Fort Worth campus by opening its first completed academic building and breaking ground on a second facility designed to expand research and industry collaboration.

  • California High School Opens New Classroom Building for 7th-, 8th-Graders

    Santa Rosa City Schools in Santa Rosa, Calif., recently announced the completion of a new classroom building for Piner High School. As the campus transitions to a Junior/Senior High School, the facility will play home to the school’s new population of seventh- and eighth-grade students.

  • Opportunity by Design Framework

    Opportunity by Design

    Educational improvement efforts often focus on curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional development, and intervention systems while treating the physical school building as background. But school design is not a passive backdrop to learning — it is a structural lever for equity.

  • Missouri Child Development Center Completes $2.3M Expansion

    The Urban Sprouts Child Development Center in St. Louis, Mo., recently announced the completion of a $2.3-million expansion and adaptive reuse project, according to a news release. The new space includes a retail café, outdoor learning space, and a support office building.