Yale University's new School of Art and New Theater were completed for the Fall
2000 academic year. The project, to renovate an 80,000 sf building on New
Haven's Chapel St., and construct a new 32,000 sf building on an adjacent
lot, houses the graduate painting, photography, and graphic design programs,
undergraduate art programs, and the Drama School's New Theater.
The design challenge was to preserve and adapt several architecturally significant
areas within the deteriorated existing building, and by tying in the adjacent
new building, to create a complex that would function as a single school.
An art school building must function in the background to what is most important:
art and the making of art.
Making art requires flexibility; it requires clean surfaces that neither
dictate media nor limit dimension. Making art requires light; the existing
building has lengthy perimeter walls and these were opened to allow every
student to work in a studio with natural light. Making art requires solitude
but teaching requires a community and the renovation of and addition to
1156 Chapel Street provides spaces for both. The buildings offer clean concrete
floors, large windows, and open plans diverse enough to create a rich variety
of spaces.
In addition to spaces for the School of Art, the renovation includes a 5000-square
foot experimental theater for Yale's School of Drama, and its necessary
support spaces including green room, dressing rooms, public lobby, ticketing,
and backstage support. |
