Schematic Design Feedback

On Wednesday, I had a schematic design presentation with three guest critics from Meticulous Design + Architecture. They offered some valuable design suggestions that I'm excited to work on next week. I also had a meeting with our clients - members of the Department of Theatre & Dance - and they were absolutely floored to visualize their new spaces! Since some of their classes and offices are located in this building currently, they couldn't believe their building could look so different! One of their major comments was that the design actually looks like a performing arts facility as opposed to their currently outdated facilities.

With my project's building change last December, I had to do a little extra designing at the start of this semester to re-block the space - something I had already done for the Northside Middle School last fall. After reevaluating the square footage and making some cuts to the program to make everything fit, I ended up with ~160,000 SF.

Below are my block plans showing the new facility layout. The building is 5 floors including the basement level. Continuing on this semester, I plan to focus mainly on the development of the instructional spaces on Level 2 & 3. The client is most interested in seeing the designs of these spaces and this is also my preferred section of the project, so it's a win-win!

The concept for Ball State University's Theatre & Dance facilities is the ellipsis, which signifies an omission. This pause nudges you to fill in the blank by entering your own creative thoughts. Within the grammatical use of the ellipsis, there are two parts - the sentence and the ellipsis. A sentence is structured and informative, representing the classroom learning spaces and administration. The ellipsis is open ended but also plays off the sentence that came before, representing the various studios, shops, and collaborative spaces where students can use their acquired knowledge to explore and extend their creativity. The ellipsis guides students' learning then allows for additional exploration by letting the students "fly" on their own creative path. More information describing the concept will come in future posts.

Below is a perspective of the circular atrium connecting all of the studio and lab spaces. This atrium will be used as a social meeting space for students to collaborate, cool down, and learn from watching others. All of the studio spaces surrounding this atrium will have glass curtain walls so students can learn from watching others. The curtain walls also offer transparency between spaces, fostering a sense of community and openness between disciplines - something they do not currently have.

The perspective below shows a dance studio design. The studio will have mirrors and bars on two walls with lots of natural light. Indirect light will also flow down around the ceiling, offering a diffused, creative atmosphere.

Continuing next week, I will be updating some small sections of the floor plan based on this week's critiques, increasing the space's connection to the concept, and further developing the instructional spaces on the 2nd and 3rd floors.