The Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts
Creating A New Arts Quad
The Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts is sited directly across the lawn from the recently completed Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum, also designed by Machado Silvetti, as part of a collection of buildings around a reconstructed pond that creates a new arts quad at Hamilton College and helps develop connections between the two sides of campus.
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Client: Hamilton College
Location: Clinton, NY
Year: 2014
Status: Built
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Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture | AIA New England | 2016
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"Marco natural." Clarin. 2015.
Site Design Considerations
Porosity is a critical component of the design, with a goal of inducing movement through and around the new building to draw it fully into the campus fabric. The project siting and design also carefully consider pedestrian and vehicular access from existing campus roads and walks.
Featured Spaces
Theatre and the visual arts at Hamilton are integrated into the broader liberal arts curriculum—both students and faculty from all majors and departments use the new building. The Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts brings classrooms, studios, faculty offices, performance spaces and technical workshops into one 24-hour facility to reinforce this interdisciplinary program.
Programs
The building brings two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and four-dimensional art studios under the same roof in a building that is equipped with state-of-the-art ventilation systems, controllable natural light, loading dock and freight elevator access and classrooms and storage spaces that are specially designed to accommodate Hamilton’s unique visual arts curriculum.
The multidisciplinary space uses digital media as a bridge between diverse areas of study to draw students from art, theatre and music departments as well as mathematics, social sciences, physics and others into a collaborative space.
“Teeming with natural light, the Kennedy Center’s flexible, open areas invite collaboration and discussion, while its smaller spaces accommodate individual study and reflection.”
— Hamilton College
Related Media
Kennedy Center for Theatre & the Studio Arts Design Process
Stories