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An "Arts Factory"

A rendering of the new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center Colorado College’s new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center represents an innovative concept in the teaching of the arts. The building is designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and to provide the latest in technology.

“The building will offer an atmosphere in which the unpredictable might predictably happen,” says philosophy professor Jonathan Lee, a member of the campus building committee. “This will be a place that shakes up student and faculty expectations about the relationship between teaching and creative work in the arts.”

“It’s a new generation in teaching. It’s an arts factory,” says Tom Lindblade, professor and chair of the Colorado College drama/dance department.

Donna Arnink, a drama and design professor who as chair of the campus building committee has been called “the keeper of the vision,” says the multi-purpose building was designed to be a production space as much as a teaching space.  “More than any other facility, this building unifies all the disciplines. It will provide an innovative teaching map for CC; an innovative teaching map that will define our future,” says Arnink.

An artist's rendering of the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center interior Display spaces will be scattered throughout the facility in unexpected places, catwalks circle a center atrium and many classrooms have glass walls, making the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center a vibrant, exciting experience as well as a structure.

The building will house Colorado College’s drama/dance department and the film studies program, but its facilities can be used by a wide range of departments, including music, art, English – even physics.

The new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center will feature a main auditorium, film screening room, black box performance studio, music and dance rehearsal rooms, digital media labs, textile and set shops, classrooms, offices and an Inter-Disciplinary Experimental Arts (IDEA) Space,  to be used as a collaborative gallery.

“It’s an institution for un-institutional things,” says Thaddeus Phillips, an innovative New York theater artist and a 1994 graduate of Colorado College. Phillips describes the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center as a place where “the building itself is saying the arts can be and should be happening together.”

Antoine Predock Antoine Predock, the award-winning architect who designed the building, views the center as serving as the physical backbone of the arts culture on campus, setting the stage for catalytic possibilities of encounter between disciplines and creating a web-like network between art and other academic disciplines.

The Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center is designed for optimum flexibility, with every space having at least three possible functions. The lobby area can be used for receptions, as a performance space, or as a gallery to display artwork. A CAD (computer-aided design) lab can be used by a film animation class, a class designing pages for a book of poetry and a drama/dance class working on set and lighting or costume design. Even walkways will have specialized lighting allowing for multiple uses.

Technology is an important component of the building, as arts and technology are increasingly interconnected. Collaboration is evident here too; while individual departments may not be able to justify expensive technology, it becomes a sound investment when used by various departments. Thus, the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center’s computer and software systems can be used for a variety of inter-departmental purposes, including music composition, film and video editing and scoring, graphic arts and composition.

The spirit of collaboration also is apparent in the design of classroom spaces, which are flexible and easy to reconfigure for classes, studios, dance workshops or stage productions.

“It’s wonderful to have a place where the disciplines can speak to each other,” says Erin Rollman, a 1998 Colorado College graduate and a founder of Buntport Theater, an award-winning collaborative theater troupe based in Denver. “What better chance of an accidental collaborative effort than being in proximity with other creative people? Just being in the same vicinity and passing by a room, hearing someone play music, or seeing a piece of artwork, can inspire you.”

Drama/dance professor Peggy Berg envisions a new type of collaboration taking place. “In this type of collaboration, the end point is not in view. You don’t know where the collaboration will take you.”

Another rendering of the new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center Even the name – Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center – is meaningful. The center promises to be the cornerstone of a new approach to the arts and their teaching. Additionally, the building is geographically situated at the intersection of a performing arts corridor, consisting of Colorado College’s Armstrong Hall, with its 730-seat Armstrong Theatre and 90-seat Max Kade Theatre; Colorado College’s Packard Hall, with a 300-seat auditorium; and the soon-to-be expanded Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

As the embodiment of this emphasis on creative collaboration, the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center will unite students and faculty in production, presentation and discussion of work in the arts. This type of cutting-edge, collaborative work demands its own building, a center-stage facility that showcases Colorado College’s creative energies.