Facility Focus
PHOTOS © PAUL CROSBY
AUDI TORIUMS AND PERFORMING ARTS
Macalester College
Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center
A
S A LIBERAL ARTS
college, Macalester College in St.
Paul, MN, believes that exposure
to the arts is important for arts majors as
well as undergraduate students alike. By
undertaking the renovation and expansion
of its existing Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, Macalester reinforced its commitment
to arts — including music, visual arts,
theatre, and dance.
The existing Fine Arts Center, built in
1963, consisted of four buildings for Music,
Art, Humanities, and Theatre/Dance,
joined by an inwardly focused Arts Commons. Just completed, Phase I of this multiphased project created an extroverted Arts
Commons and reconfigured the music
building. A Phase II transformation of the
76
Visual Arts building is currently in design,
and Phase III addresses the Theatre and
Dance departments.
Under Phase I, HGA Architects and
Engineers (HGA) transformed the music
building and commons area into a stateof-the-art facility. The new Lowe Dayton
Arts Commons creates a social heart for
the music, visual arts, humanities, theatre,
and dance communities. Framing the
commons is a 2,200-sq.-ft. art gallery for
formal display of rotating student and professional work, classrooms, critique rooms,
and faculty offices.
The music building's signature piece is
the new 318-seat Mairs Concert Hall. Connected to the Commons by a spacious lobby,
the concert hall's interior is surrounded by
COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / MARCH 2013
undulating red-oak wood slats, which conceal fabric curtains that deploy and retract
to meet varying acoustic needs. The stage
has been enlarged to allow larger instrumental and choral groups to perform.
HGA also designed two large rehearsal
and recital halls into the music building for
the simultaneous rehearsal of the College's
instrumental and choral music programs.
Also added were updated individual practice
rooms and faculty and teaching studios.
HGA addressed the energy inefficiency
and opacity of the music building's original
wall system by re-cladding the building with
an energy-efficient façade that presents a vibrant new face to the campus. The building
is designed to be equivalent of LEED Silver
certification. CPM
WWW.PLANNING 4EDUCATION.COM