Boston Arts Academy (BAA) is the city’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts, serving students who reflect the diversity of Boston’s neighborhoods.
It serves as a laboratory and a beacon for artistic and academic innovation, preparing a diverse community of aspiring artist scholars to be successful in their college or professional careers and to be engaged members of a democratic society.
Accordingly, the project was designed as a campus for the community campus and increases the school’s capacity by more than 15 percent. With better rehearsal studios, high-tech fashion and fine art studios, a gymnasium, dance studios, a cutting-edge STEAM lab, a rooftop recital hall, and professional theatres, student-artists who attend Boston Arts Academy are exposed to the latest technologies and artistic processes used by prominent artists and entertainers.
Situated on a prominent corner across from historic Fenway Park, the new building was designed as a beacon for the neighborhood—to communicate to passersby its importance as a learning community. This is expressed at the exterior through a series of projecting glass bay windows that showcase the activity occurring within and keep occupants constantly connected to the urban fabric. The building also includes rooftop outdoor learning and performance space.
While catering to the student experience, the building also provides space rental options for local artists and performers. In this way, the school can continue to develop a community learning environment where students not only can create and compose their own original work but also be inspired through working artists in and around Boston.
Open, immersive gathering spaces help establish a collegiate ambiance within the building and at the street level, providing places for formal and informal learning to flow seamlessly out of the building into the community beyond. With a notable civic presence on Ipswich Street directly across famous Fenway Park, the school’s street-level gathering spaces display the innovation, creative risk-taking, and professionalism encouraged by the arts curriculum.
The building has been designed to foster health and well-being among its users by providing a range of features that are proven to improve indoor environmental quality (IEQ), with a focus on improved daylight, thermal comfort, acoustics, and reduced CO2 levels to improve cognitive function.
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