Photographs © Anton Grassl/Esto
A new facility for Dartmouth’s Studio Art and Film and Media departments, the Visual Arts Center represents the consolidation of these two programs for the first time in the college’s history. The new facility will house film production and editing spaces, sculpture, printmaking, photography, architecture, painting, drawing and senior studios. At the convergence of the departments is a new program for Digital Humanities that will foster the interaction of new and traditional media and fields of study. The Visual Arts Center has been developed around several principles. The first is a swath of communal public spaces that allow for interaction not only within the student/faculty population, but also with the town of Hanover. On the ground floor is an auditorium—which, in addition to providing classroom space for the arts, will also operate as a functioning theater, allowing for possible film festivals and events open to the public. The connection to Lebanon Street at this level is made through a secondary entrance that allows access through the building to the main lobby. Finally, the ground floor of the new building also contains a student and faculty gallery with large glazed windows, sharing art production with pedestrian passersby. The new Visual Arts Center occupies a prime location and consequently must function not only as an educational space, but also as a new entrance to both the campus and the arts precinct. A 105,000 square foot building, stretching along a length of Lebanon Street from the Facilities department to Spaulding Auditorium in the Hopkins Center, the new building provides a hardscape and lawn plaza at the intersection of the arts at Dartmouth. The new Visual Arts Center is designed to achieve a LEED Gold rating, and utilizes the following features to meet this goal: superinsulation of perimeter walls, rainwater harvesting, and optimized natural daylighting of upper level studios.
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