A restorative place within nature

Drawing on Franklin & Marshall College’s motto Lux et Lex, the Winter Visual Arts Center for the Art, Art History, and Film Department is conceived as ‘light’ in complementary/contrast to the ‘heavy’ exemplary brick architecture of the 1856 ‘Old Main’ original campus building.

The building activates the southern end of the campus as a new campus destination as well as reinforcing the college’s historic axis by extending it to the south and reaching out to the town.

Large diameter trees, the oldest elements of the 52-acre arboretum campus, were the conceptual generator of the building’s geometry.

The main floor is lifted into the trees on a porous ground level, open to the campus and the adjacent Buchanan Park.

At night, reflections of the hovering building glow in the water of the large reflecting pool.

See more at stevenholl.com

Story by: Trendsideas