Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Dartmouth College: The Black Family Visual Arts Center

  • 08/01/15
Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth College

PHOTOS © ANTON GRASSL/ESTO

The Visual Arts Center marks the eastern entrance to Dartmouth’s campus and formalizes a mixture of significant buildings into a re-envisioned Arts Precinct. The 105,000-square-foot building stretches along Lebanon Street, where the institution engages the town of Hanover, NH. The project provides a formal lawn and hardscaped Arts Plaza, which invites the public to participate in a renewed focus on the arts at Dartmouth.

Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston, the building consolidates Dartmouth’s Studio Art and Film and Media departments into a single facility for the first time in the college’s history, and provides spaces for a newly created Digital Humanities program. The facility houses sculpture, printmaking, photography, architecture, painting and drawing studios, as well as state-of-the-art film production, animation and editing spaces. At the heart of the facility is the Arts Forum, a central atrium space that brings light and air into the core of the urban block. The three-story space is designed to promote cross-disciplinary interaction and the collegial sharing of ideas.

On the ground floor, the public is welcomed to the Visual Arts Center through a lobby and 250-seat auditorium. Adjacent to the theater is a shared exhibition gallery where student and faculty work from both of the building’s departments will be displayed. The gallery and theater lobby are designed with large picture windows facing the street and Arts Plaza, to share the creative work of the college with pedestrians and the town. The use of exterior slate blocks and precast concrete panels throughout the ground floor makes the space an extension of the public sidewalk and Arts Plaza. Triple-glazed custom-fritted glass volumes on the building’s upper floor house the college’s Artist in Residence Studio and the All Campus Conference center as amenities for the larger campus community.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

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).

  • Houston-Area High School Breaks Ground on 117,000SF Multi-Use Facility

    North Shore Senior High School, part of Galena Park ISD in Houston, Texas, recently broke ground on a new multi-use facility for student extracurriculars, according to a news release. The North Shore Multi-Use Facility will include dedicated practice and training space for the school’s athletics and fine arts programs.

  • Illinois State University Breaks Ground on College of Fine Arts Transformation

    Illinois State University in Normal, Ill., recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts transformation project, according to university news. The series of new constructions and renovations will upgrade spaces in Centennial East, the Center for the Visual Arts, and the Center for the Performing Arts, as well as replace the existing Centennial West facility with a new Commons Building.

  • Northeastern University Breaks Ground on New Housing Community

    Northeastern University recently announced the groundbreaking of a new student housing community on its campus in Boston, Mass., according to a news release. The university is partnering with American Campus Communities (ACC) for development of the project, which will have the capacity for 1,200 students and has a scheduled completion date of fall 2028.