Page 8 - spaces4learning, November/December 2019

Two ideas about adaptive reuse projects on campus:
• Consider bringing together like functions and programs with logical links into adapted older buildings. Historic structures with outstanding finishes, fixtures, and aes- thetic flourishes inside and out can serve accordingly. It is not about shoehorning new things into a building; it’s about consolidation with character.
• Bear in mind that “there is abundant potential sheltered within existing buildings; it doesn’t take a wrecking ball to be creative,” says Piscuskas at 1100 Architect, adding, “Preservation and reuse can be just as farsighted and forward-looking as a newly built structure.”
spaces4learning REVITALIZING HISTORIC FACILITIES
Photos Credit Scott Berman
Haverford College’s VCAM facility is a 24/7 creative hub that has brought new life to an outdated gymnasium.
on learning (in) visual literacy across the liberal arts.” The college points out that VCAM now houses arts and humanities, and has facilities for a “new visual studies program, cultivating film and digital media projects; curatorial experimentation and arts exhi- bition; and 3D printing, prototyping, and design...(and a) screen- ing room, a central campus lounge and community kitchen, an innovation incubator, and flexible studio/exhibition labs.” The design won an American Institute of Architects award in 2018.
Harrower says VCAM can be seen “as a conversation between old and new.” Among the many changes that created it: remov- ing a basement swimming pool and inserting into the building’s huge atrium a stack, so to speak, consisting of various spaces, including some for teaching and exhibition. The old gym’s dis- tinctive, suspended running track remains, now serving, after its floor was made level, as a walkway.
This is an impressively scaled and attractive interior with many creative touches, such as reusing sections of the old gym floor; furniture pieces carefully selected for the spaces they occupy, in- cluding corners; and old running track balusters repurposed as legs for a large table in an attractive presentation lounge commu- nity kitchen. The space is a vibrant one also serves as an attractive pathway, and lingering place, that connects the north and south sides of the campus. The bottom line, as Harrower puts it, is that VCAM has achieved “all that was envisioned for it.”
All told, the buildings are bold examples of adaptive reuse, and show the willingness of institutions to celebrate and revitalize histor- ic buildings while taking strategic steps forward. Such an approach could open up countless options, even surprising ones, for existing spaces and overall buildings on campuses from coast to coast.
Scott Berman is a freelance writer with experience in educational topics.
8 NOV/DEC 2019