As the name suggests, the Cornerstone Arts Center will be a building that stands out -- a showcase for the arts, a "cornerstone" fundamental to the future of the arts at Colorado College.
The structure itself will be striking, a most-welcome architectural addition to the Colorado Springs arts community. But it's what will happen inside the CAC that excites those closest to the project.
"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 who was recently appointed the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor at Colorado College. "This will be a place that shakes up student and faculty expectations about the relationship between teaching and creative work in the arts."
Committee Chair Donna Arnink, a drama and design professor who lives and breathes theater, finds the wonder of the CAC so irresistible she devoted her sabbatical last year to working on the planning aspects of the project. Antoine Predock, the internationally renowned architect commissioned by the college, is thoroughly inspired by the center and its site in the Rocky Mountains, she says. "When Antoine talks about the college's Cornerstone Arts Center, he talks about a concept that is astonishingly fresh. The poet, the painter, the dancer will all work together here to develop unique approaches to art. It is a big idea, a concept project, one that characterizes the essence of CC."
As the center melds dance, theater, film, art and music in dazzling new ways, it will become a model for arts education across the country, she adds.
This summer, we sat down with Jonathan and Donna and asked them to share their enthusiasm for this project with Bulletin readers.
oWhat is it like to work with a world-renowned architect?
Donna: Very exciting and educational. As a set and lighting designer, I manipulate space and the psychological and physiological response to space. Predock does the same as an architect, so our thinking processes are very similar.
Our committee spent a year pretty much getting this project together in terms of what we wanted this building to accomplish before we hired him. We wanted an architect who would fulfill our plans rather than impose what he wanted. Predock has been very good at this collaborative approach.
Jonathan: One of the things most fascinating about Antoine is that he has been involved in many different arts: He has painted, sculpted, been a dancer, and even ran a dance company in New York for awhile. He is as much a person of the theater as he is an architect. He is the perfect example of the kind of cross-disciplinary artist that we're actually hoping our students will become.
oI understand every inch of this facility has been planned.
Donna: By and large, the entire space has been planned in terms of how it will look, how it will function, how it will relate to all the other areas.
Jonathan: Every inch has been planned carefully, both by the building committee before the architects were involved and again later. One of the things most unique about the building, though, is that it has been planned to be maximally flexible. And that's an important aspect of the building. If the building does what we all hope it will do, there will never be a time when a square inch has been lost to a single task.
Donna: Each room will have at least two distinct functions. For instance, one room will function as a prep room for scenery because it's between the scene shop and the theater. It will have a flexible wooden floor and be wired for lighting and sound so it can also be dance space or a film studio. It can be used for sculpture or painting classes. It opens up to the courtyard so it can be used for performance art. Our whole thrust was to ensure every space could function for a multitude of uses.
oTom Lindblade, the chair of the drama and dance department, describes the CAC as a petri dish -- something set up for experimentation. How would you describe the building?
Donna: I call it an arts factory. It's a production space as much as it is a teaching space. Things will be learned here because of the activity in this space. It's going to be a very happening kind of space.
Jonathan: Each of the spaces has been designed to "morph" as much as possible. The building will never be static.
Donna: The spaces relate to each other and have many uses. You can move from one space to another, or use the spaces simultaneously. The interrelationship of the spaces is just as exciting as each singular space.
Jonathan: Antoine speaks of his buildings in the language of choreography. As people move from space to space, they engage different aspects of the building. It's not just that it's flexible, it will make things possible that are not easily possible in a traditional building.
oThis is a building to see and be seen, correct?
Donna: In designing this building, we wanted whoever walks in to see and hear art happening. We want people to see the rehearsals, or watch people working on scenery or choreographing a show. It was very important to us that this building show what transpires behind the scenes. Process is the key word here.
Jonathan: Too often people see works of art and they think of the product. They think of the painting on the wall or the show on the stage. They don't realize the incredible life that lies behind that product. This building is designed to reflect that process of art.
Donna: I've worked 30 years in dark theaters. I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't want to feel like I'm in some kind of tomb. We've designed the theaters to have sliding glass doors on both sides. Not only does this let in fresh air and light, it also enables the performance to spill out into the adjacent courtyards. The large theater has a glass wall on the south side to let in light and warmth.
This is an incredibly permeable building. There are long horizontal windows, tall vertical windows, massive windows, and little peek-a-boo windows. You can look through one and see several rooms. There are so many wonderful little venues for lighting, both natural and manipulative.
oHow about views of the peak?
Donna: Antoine is known for his monolithic buildings. This building is monolithic but it's open monolithic. He knew we wanted to take advantage of the western views. There are views from the lobby, the main theater, the classrooms...there's even a large roof deck we can go out onto that has a marvelous vista. The building has been carefully designed so that even spaces on the east side of the structure will have open views to the west.
oTell me about the audience. How will they be engaged?
Jonathan: The whole nature of the building encourages the audience to be more interactive and engaged. In a building so full of new vistas, so full of paths, so full of new opportunities for encounter, I just can't imagine an audience wouldn't be jazzed and activated by it.
I think the building will seem, as you approach it, mysterious. There will be a lot of light. Antoine is a master of light. It will kind of suck you in by its mystery. Before you've actually gone through the door, you're already involved.
Donna: And I think you're invited as well. From the outside, you can look through the music room into the courtyard and watch various arts developing. As you walk down the alley, you can observe productions in process, being constructed and painted. I think there is an incredible invitation about this building. Just walking around within this building will inspire you to engage in and experience things happening.
oPredock talks of the journey of the building. What does he mean?
Jonathan: The student's journey through this building should be full of detours and spirals. If they enroll in Donna's lighting class, they may follow it with a painting class or a dance class. Before you know it, the student has become this kind of collaborative inter-arts person that the Cornerstone Arts Initiative is all about. That's very different from other arts programs. Students and faculty will get excited by this building, and get involved in theater and film and dance and painting.
oIs there gallery space?
Donna: Art will permeate this place. Perhaps you'll find it by opening a door or peeking underneath the staircase. The building will be full of little mysteries and surprises where students can display art. There's a traditional gallery that will largely host traveling exhibits, but there are also all these wonderful spaces allocated just for students to express themselves. We're even hoping there will be space outside the shops to display theatrical art, which is thrown away and never displayed now.
Jonathan: One of the shocking things about Colorado College is that we have not been able to host traveling art exhibits because we haven't had adequate gallery space, with sufficient security and adequate walls and lighting. This space will do it.
It is also really important to note that having a gallery host a show by a master artist will be something very vital for the city of Colorado Springs.
oDoes the lobby have a focal point?
Donna: Antoine says the lobby will be like "nothing ever imagined before." He's designed something like scaffolding that winds and extends its way throughout the lobby where lighting can be hung, performances can take place, and audiences can sit.
Jonathan: It will turn the lobby into a work of art in a way that is unmistakable. We all know that buildings are works of art, that architecture is an art form. In most of the buildings in which we spend time, though, that's not obvious. This will be obvious. There is no question that the lobby scaffolding will be visually remarkable.
I hesitate to use the word focal point because part of the wonder of this building is that it isn't a "focal" sort of building. As it mysteriously pulls you in, it leads you somewhere else. It doesn't have a center or real focus in that sense.
oWhere will performances take place?
Donna: There are two large theaters planned in the CAC: one in the north wing and another in the south wing. We've designed them to be more innovative and flexible than a traditional studio theater and a thrust theater.
Jonathan: True, we'll have two theaters, but the whole building is designed as a performance space, an art gallery, a film studio.
Donna: We're trying to provide a space that lets everyone use their imagination and create whatever they want in any way that they want, indoors or out, on the rooftop or on the stairs. Hopefully there will be no end to the ways this building can be used. I don't see in my mind one particular arrangement at all. I see this as a place that energizes people's imaginations, encouraging them to do performance in a way we haven't explored here on campus at all.
oHave you seen anything like this anywhere else?
Donna: The one building that sold me on Antoine Predock was the arts building he designed on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe. I was so excited sitting in the courtyard of that building. I was inspired, imagining all kinds of things coming out of everywhere. Where we could put scenery, where the dancers would come in, where lights could be hung and where projections could be shown...everything so excited me that I was hardly able to contain myself in that space. It was a static space but it encouraged imaginative opportunities. And I thought, this is what we want. Something that allows flexibility. A space where anything can happen.
oThis building will have smart classrooms. What are those?
Jonathan: It's a classroom that makes possible the use of all existing and future technologies. We have a few relatively smart classrooms on campus now in Armstrong and Packard halls. But the current smart classrooms don't have sound insulation separating them from the classrooms around them. If you're teaching a class and the students next door are watching "Ben Hur," you can't hear yourself think.
The key is video projection driven by computers with good sound quality. When I teach a course on aesthetics, we talk about works of art all the time. But unless I bring in a slide projector, books, and a stereo, we can't easily experience those works of art. The goal is to have classrooms that facilitate that to the greatest extent possible.
The first step is underway now as the art department in Packard Hall digitizes their slide collection. That enormous resource soon will be available on computer. This is the beginning of what Tom Lindblade calls the arts brain, a lofty goal to have the slide library accessible but also the entire music library and the entire film collection and the archives of college art shows and theater and music productions. In theory, someone simply sitting at a computer could call up the whole or any bit of world culture and present it in the classroom.
oNo fisticuffs during the campus planning stages?
Donna: Not at all. It was pretty wonderful. The building committee made a commitment from the onset that this would be a collaborative project and that we would look out for the other person's interests and needs. I think we've done that very well.
The process has been so energizing for me. It's really just a priority in my life. I build stage sets. They last four weeks and you throw them in the dumpster and that's it. To be involved in something like this is astounding. I do temporary art and I'm now doing something that's going to last. I'm totally committed to it.
Jonathan: We all believe that this building will be the most important architectural event in Colorado Springs. In the same way that people come to this city and go to the Air Force chapel, they will come to CC to see this building.
We shouldn't underestimate the importance the building will play in the community beyond the college. I think it will be the perfect opportunity for the college to build new bridges in the community, partly because of its inherent beauty and mystery and partly because of its location as a cornerstone. The philosophy of the building, this openness, this permeability, this collaborative morphing quality is something that will work for the students, the faculty, the campus and the city of Colorado Springs. I would hope the building would bring alumni back to CC as well, exciting them and energizing them in the same way it does us.
Click here to read more about the Cornerstone Arts Building from Sydney Pollack.
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