A former auto repair facility has been transformed into a dynamic outdoor teaching space that responds to its natural environment and built context at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa.
Designed as an outdoor black box theater by Spillman Farmer Architects, Bethlehem, Pa., the $1.7 million, 7,000-square-foot Arts Plaza is a raw, open-air space for the arts that hosts a variety of planned and spontaneous artistic endeavors, including performance art, visual art exhibits and small group musical performances.
Spillman Farmer has been working with the college since it started to grow beyond its confines and into the town’s downtown, a project that has culminated in the redevelopment of an entire industrial block. “It was a series of vacant buildings,” says Joseph N. Biondo, AIA, design principal at Spillman Farmer. “The college took on the responsibility of redeveloping these utilitarian facilities into a large arts education and exposition hub for the entire Lehigh Valley region.”
Biondo worked with the college on a variety of projects from early 2000. Following those projects, the focus turned to a vacant garage adjacent to the WIlliams Visual Arts Building. Built over Bushkill Creek, the structure was in good shape, but the façade was deteriorated, Biondo explains. This presented an opportunity to create an open-air teaching space.
“Unlike many urban developments, which are conceptualized as ‘infill’ of an existing context, the Arts Plaza is an urban ‘unfill’ project,” Biondo explains. “The existing building had solid walls that blocked the relationship between the site and the community. We removed these walls to create new types of connections in and around the site, bringing together the Easton community, the college, the natural environment, the streetscape and local history. These interactions encourage a focus on user experience, material richness, spatial transparency and sensory stimulation.”
The facility’s concrete platform foundation and timber frame were both salvaged and reused from the former building, and are complemented by brick and steel. The brick and steel are introduced in unconventional ways that lend an experiential quality to the space while honoring the city’s prevailing architecture, as required by the Easton Historic Review Board.
The plaza’s masonry walls are clad with Mohawk clinker bricks from Colonial Brick Corp., Cayuga, Ind. The concrete floor slab was repaired and refinished so the two new structural steel armatures, each draped with a veil of stainless steel mesh from Carl Stahl DecorCable, Chicago, could sit. The transparent, ghost-like structures complement the masonry monoliths, reflecting the dimensions and rhythm of windows of the nearby Williams Building. The X-TEND steel cable system was engineered by Officium, Stuttgart, Germany, out of a steel cable spun by Sava Industries, Riverdale, N.J. The X-TEND system features AISI 316 stainless steel cables and seamless ferrules, which create a metal fabric that forms a diamond panel when installed. McGregor Industries, Dunmore, Pa., fabricated and erected with armatures with 32 tons of mainly W8x28s structural steel members.
The Williams Building is connected to the Arts Plaza with a new entrance located within the clinker brick-faced side wall. A new opening was created in an existing corridor within the Williams Building, which introduces a 3-D, human-scale element into the wall.
Lafayette College Arts Plaza, Easton, Pa.
Award: 2013 Citation of Merit from the American Institute of Architects Pennsylvania Chapter
Architect:
Spillman Farmer Architects, Bethlehem, Pa.
Construction manager: Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., Allentown, Pa.
Civil engineer: McTish, Kunkel & Associates, Pittsburgh
Electrical engineer: Lehigh Valley Engineering, Bethlehem
Fabricator/erector: McGregor Industries, Dunmore, Pa.
Steel cable engineer: Officium, Stuttgart, Germany
Structural engineer: Barry Isett & Associates, Allentown
Brick: Colonial Brick Corp., Cayuga, Ind.
Stainless steel mesh: Carl Stahl DecorCable, Chicago, www.decorcable.com
Steel cable: Sava Industries, Riverdale, N.J., www.savacable.com
Photos: Barry Halkin Photography, courtesy of Spillman Farmer Architects