{"id":995,"date":"2016-11-22T12:27:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T12:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/essentialhome.eu\/blog\/?p=995"},"modified":"2016-11-22T12:27:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T12:27:18","slug":"kent-state-center-architecture-environmental-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/kent-state-center-architecture-environmental-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent State Center for Architecture and Environmental Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Walking on the Kent State<\/strong><\/em> University quad on a balmy fall evening, Mark Mistur, AIA, dean of the College of Architecture & Environmental Design, came across the school\u2019s marching band. Rather than walk by, he invited the group into the campus\u2019s newest building\u2014tubas, drums, and all\u2014and encouraged them to \u201cplay the space.\u201d \u201cThe energy that filled that space was simply incredible,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen they stopped, it took about four seconds for the building to calm down, it was so full of acoustic energy. It was remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: MIDCENTURY MODERN HOME ACCESSORIES TO GET RIGHT NOW<\/a>\n<\/h4>\n

\"Kent<\/a><\/p>\n

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The structure that the band was playing in with John Philip Sousa\u2013fueled fervor wasn\u2019t a new concert hall, but rather the open studio space in the new Kent State Center for Architecture and Environmental Design. Designed by New York\u2013based Weiss\/Manfredi Architecture\/Landscape\/Urbanism, the 117,000-square-foot facility unites all of the university\u2019s design students under one roof for the first time in recent memory: For years, the departments has been scattered across three facilities\u2014a classroom space, a repurposed gymanium, and a disused dorm\u2014Mistur says, and at the new facility\u2019s opening, a faculty member told him: \u201cThis is the first time I feel like we are one college.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sited on a plot that connects the main quad to a residentially scaled neighborhood to the east, the building is a four-story brick bar, carefully scaled to match the larger campus buildings without overwhelming the adjacent houses. The architects worked with Belden Brick to create a honey-hued iron spot brick, which was fired in a beehive kiln to create natural variation in the color. \u201cWe thought it would be interesting to take a typically traditional material and push it to find a combination of old and new,\u201d says design partner Michael Manfredi, FAIA.<\/p>\n

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Courses of regular bricks are interrupted with vertical fins made from bull-nosed units. These fins are arranged in what the architects call \u201csyncopated meters.\u201d Bands of fins, stacked vertically on the fa\u00e7ade and offset from one another, create an overall pattern that is almost textile in nature and enlivens the fa\u00e7ade as light and shadow play across it over the course of the day.<\/p>\n

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But the most conspicuous exterior moves are not in the brickwork, but rather in the interruptions of it. On the east and west ends of the building, expansive glazing reveals ground-floor public spaces such as a caf\u00e9, lobby, and reading room. Wedges of glazing project from the upper portions of the north fa\u00e7ade, and a ribbon of glass highlights an enclosed fire stair that runs diagonally down the south.<\/p>\n

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Inside, the architects looked to create spaces that best serve all of the design students, across a variety of disciplines. \u201cWe created settings, as opposed to spaces, where teachers could teach in different ways, recognizing that how we teach and the tools we use five to 10 years from now are going to be very different from the tools we use right now,\u201d Manfredi says. A vast, three-tiered open studio steps down from the top floor, with glass-lined critique rooms on each level that provide pin-up and review space. The floors are connected by a wide stair on the building\u2019s northern edge, which is peppered with informal lounges outfitted with the firm\u2019s signature brightly colored furniture. \u201cWe like warm colors,\u201d Manfredi says. Faculty offices and labs for CNC milling, 3D printing, and more are clustered in a core on the south side.<\/p>\n

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The difference between this building and those projects Weiss cites as precedents, is that previously the terraced spaces for informal interaction were one piece of a larger overall concept. Here, the terraces are themselves the concept. The aim is to encourage a cross-pollination of ideas between students\u2014desk assignments even commingle studios of different years and disciplines. \u201cAs faculty members at various institutions ourselves, we feel you need to have opportunities to see and be seen for the real teaching and learning of architecture to occur,\u201d Weiss says. \u201cStudents learn far more from those who are side by side in a studio with them than from the directed instruction of a professor.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Weiss\/Manfredi also took the idea of the glass-enclosed, cantilevered fire stair they employed at the Diana Center and widened it on the southern face of the Kent State project. Not only does the stair provide a relief from the intensity of studio\u2014\u201cit\u2019s like you\u2019ve walked outside,\u201d Mistur says\u2014but it\u2019s also being put to good, if unintended, use. \u201cI routinely walk down and see classes being taught in that stair,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It is those serendipitous learning opportunities that Mistur hopes the building will continue to encourage. The visit from the marching band spurred a collaboration with the music department, which practices in the building so that the design students can learn about acoustics. The new building is turning out to be more than just a new consolidated facility. It is, as Mistur says, \u201can instrument for what we are setting out to accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n

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source:\u00a0architectmagazine<\/a><\/p>\n

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Walking on the Kent State University quad on a balmy fall evening, Mark Mistur, AIA, dean of the College of Architecture & Environmental Design, came across the school\u2019s marching band. Rather than walk by, he invited the group into the campus\u2019s newest building\u2014tubas, drums, and all\u2014and encouraged them to \u201cplay the space.\u201d \u201cThe energy that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[177,178,176,146],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture","tag-architectute","tag-environmental-design","tag-kent-state","tag-modernism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions\/1005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essentialhome.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}