Wolfe Center for the Arts / Snøhetta

Wolfe Center for the Arts / Snohetta — © Bruce Damonte

Architects: Snøhetta
Location: Bowling Green, OH, USA
Architect Of Record: The Collaborative, Inc
Design Team: Craig Dykers, Vanessa Kassabian, Elaine Molinar, Nicolas Rader, Scott Melancon
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Bruce Damonte

Project Area: 98,000 sq ft
Client: Bowling Green State University
Landscape: Claire Fellman, Knut Bjørgum
Architect Of Record Team: Michael DiNardo, Jim Sarks, Don Myers, Lisa Crawford-Nusser

The new collaborative arts center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio contains classrooms as well as production and studio spaces to link students and faculty in the School of Art, the Department of Theatre and Film, and the College of Musical Arts.

The Wolfe Center has a unique program that unites a diverse range of art studies into a socially enterprising facility meant to encourage lively interaction among students and faculty. Plans for the building include three performance spaces: a proscenium theater that will provide space for large-scale productions of musical theater, opera, and classical drama; a studio theater for the presentation of more diverse artistic programs, including theater for young audiences and productions of new plays, and an actor’s theater to provide space for experimental productions integrating the spoken word and body movement with digital and sound technology.

Snøhetta has created a grand open hall that greets the visitor from the main entrance. Sunlit and spacious, the lobby provides views upward to the lounges, classrooms and studios of the art, music, and drama departments on the second level. Situated at the heart of the building, the proscenium theater seats 400 and can be used for a variety of performance programs. It is designed in the style of the great Broadway halls found in New York City and London. To meet the highest contemporary criteria for a theater of this kind, Snøhetta is working in close collaboration with the internationally recognized theater planners Theatre Projects Consultants and Akustiks.