The Bicknell Family Center for the Arts opened on the Pittsburg State University campus in Pittsburg, Kan., in December 2014, marking the first time students have had a dedicated performing arts center in almost 35 years. The original performing arts center was demolished in 1978 for poor building conditions.
Designed by architect of record, ACI-Boland Architects, Leawood, Kan., and design architect, William Rawn Associates Architects Inc., Boston, the new $33 million center is named after Gene Bicknell, his wife Rita and their family. It features two performance spaces, a grand entrance lobby, 3,000-square-foot multipurpose rehearsal space, 2,000-square-foot art gallery, a private reception room and donor gallery. The 1,100-seat Linda and Lee Scott Performance Hall accommodates symphony, opera, dance, drama, amplified music and more, while the 250-seat Bill and Dotty Miller Theater is the primary performance space for the drama department.
A Community Space
The center is the only performance space of its kind in the region, and is expected to become one of the Midwest’s premier venues for music, theater, lectures, art exhibits and other special events. Therefore, the designers were asked to imagine a space that could serve both the university and community.
Doug Johnston, FAIA, LEED AP, principal with William Rawn Associates, notes that the designers had to recognize the building as a university asset, while also creating a space that welcomes the community to a theater built for them.
According to Duane Cash, project manager with ACI-Boland, the university president didn’t want another brick building on campus. The building is the anchor of the new west campus, so Cash says the president was open to a more modern aesthetic and material. “He wanted something that stood out and made a statement,” he says.
Additionally, Cash adds that this facility is the keystone to that whole region for performing arts. “It was very important that [the building] felt inviting and was approachable,” he says, “but at the same time, it spoke to the importance of the activities in the building. It had to have some kind of majesty,
some importance of weight. It wasn’t just another building; it was a landmark.”
The 96,000-square-foot facility sits on 14 acres. “The building sits on a gentle hill and overlooks the edge of campus,” Johnston explains. “The lobby has a slight arc that serves to embrace people as they come up to campus. We wanted people to have full views into the space so everyone would know something special is going on in there.”
A Colorful Mosaic
Four shades of metal wall panels from Dri-Design, Holland, Mich., clad the building. The project features 35,772 square feet of Dri-Design’s 0.08-inch aluminum panels in Dark Fawn Metallic, Dark Moondust, Fawn Metallic and Moondust. The trim is a fifth color, Champagne Metallic. Queen City Roofing, Springfield, Mo., installed 14 different sizes of the four colored panels in a random pattern.
The multiple panel sizes were required because of the project’s size. “The large building could have been overwhelming if it wasn’t for the size of the metal panels; different sizes were selected to mimic the look of brick,” Cash adds. “The metal blends
with the glass and pre-fabricated concrete that also make up exterior details.”
Dri-Design metal wall panels were chosen for its rainscreen capabilities, available sizes and customization. “The metal is interesting,” says Kevin Bergeron, senior associate at William Rawn. “We designed the panel system to bring a warmth and vitality to the building’s opaque wall surfaces. We used four different colors and a random installation pattern to create a highly variegated surface, and the reflectivity of the metal allows it to change in response to varying light conditions throughout the day and evening.”
Cash says there was a lot of effort in creating the design so it looked very natural. “We took a lot of time in deciding how we wanted those four different colors to be on the building so it looked very random, but also, we had to have some kind of plan to it,” Cash explains. “There was a little bit of a challenge in laying the panels out and working with Dri-Design and the installer to make sure the panels were put on appropriately so there wasn’t a cluster of one color right next to each other.”
Queen City Roofing, along with distributor SGH Inc., Kansas City, Mo., worked with Dri-Design to create a systematic crating and installation method involving correlating color-coded shop drawings with the crate contents. This streamlined the installation process while eliminating any repetition of pattern.
To accommodate the size of the project and the schedule required by the general contractor, Crossland Construction Co. Inc., Columbus, Kan., Todd Bryant with SGH says the project was split into three releases. “The building design required a spray-on insulation with a substrate of zees and hats for anchoring the panels,” he explains. “Due to the height of the building and the loads being applied to the panels, we had the substrate engineered appropriately to accommodate the needs of the design calcs.”
Photos: Mark Kempf, St. Louis
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