Sited directly across the lawn from the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum, also designed by Machado Silvetti, The Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts at Hamilton College creates a new arts quad that enhances connections between the two sides of campus. The center’s porosity induces movement through and around the new building to fully incorporate it into the campus fabric.  

Because theatre and the visual arts are integrated into Hamilton College’s broader liberal arts curriculum, students and faculty from all majors and departments use the new building. The center brings classrooms, studios, faculty offices, performance spaces, and technical workshops into one 24-hour facility, advancing a collaborative, interdisciplinary pedagogy. The multidisciplinary space uses digital media as a bridge between different areas of study—drawing into a single space students from art, theatre, and music departments as well as mathematics, social sciences, and physics. 

“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