DWIGHT ARTS CENTERNew Haven, Connecticut4

Program

The proposed Dwight Arts Center is located on the corner of Orchard Avenue and Chapel Street in a residential neighborhood of New Haven. The Dwight Arts Center was designed to function both as a Arts center and a community facility for the Dwight neighborhood.

The building is organized around a central exhibition space. From this space, one can view the artistic efforts of the Arts Center students. The program is distributed according to the light requirements of each artistic endeavor: photograhy studios are located in the basement, ceramics is situated on the ground floor, sculpture studios

Critic: Brian Healy

occupy the second floor, and painting studios span the top floor.

Inside, the prefabricated screens (photos right) have many functions within the school. Made out of wood and glass, these screens allow people to see into the classrooms as they walk to their destination, afford the working artists/students privacy, and allow light to filter into the communal centraldisplay space.

On the first floor, which receives the most traffic, and thus demands privacy, the screens are tightly spaced. On the upper floors, the panels gradually become more loosely spaced. This allows the users to feel the

activity of the school as they walk through while affording the classroom users varyingamounts of privacy. The goal of these 'porous' screens is to create a sense of community by tying in the actiivities of the classrooms to the circulationof the building.

In putting the activities and products of the art school in various modes of display, cross pollination between departments is fostered; the production and presentationof art are fused to generatean active dynamic space.

DWIGHT ARTSPLANS + SECTIONS + PERSPECTIVES

DWIGHT ARTSSECTIONS + MODEL

Sections show how the spacing between the wall panels facing the exhibit space open up as the visitor moves up in the building. Thepanels were designed to allowlight from the perimeter to stream into the exhibit space,and to allow the public glimpses of the ongoing activity in the studios while

affording the studio users privacy. The circulation and the activity of the building are interlocked. The top section shows how people getting out at the elevator stops have a primary view into the activity of the studio. The bottom section iscut through the exhibition space.

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