Escuela de Bellas Artes de Carolina
New Haven
Davis, Fuster Arquitectos

An arts school is built as a sequence of loggias and courtyards

© Matthew Hranek

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By James S. Russell, AIA

The architects had to overhaul and reinvent the existing campus of the Carolina Fine Arts School, dotted with three buildings dating from 1928 to the 1960s that accommodated a school specializing in music education only. Carolina’s mayor José E. Aponte-De la Torre asked the architect to rework the school to handle a much broader range of arts, including dance and the plastic arts, as well as music.

The existing buildings had to be retained, however, and not just for budget reasons. The school needed to stay in use continuously as new structures were erected on the site. The complex program for some 900 students as young as seven and as old as 18 included a 500-seat auditorium; a variety of music practice rooms; studios for painting, sculpture, and printmaking; and studios for dance, along with the expected variety of support spaces. The school authorities also asked the architects to create distinct identities for each discipline in their design, while providing places for everyone to mingle.

Rather than seek an overarching "big idea," the designers allowed themselves to be guided by a variety of influences as they fitted the new program into the loose triangle of open space defined by the existing structures.

Anchored by the symmetrical U of the 1928 building, which they turned over to primarily administrative use, Davis and Fuster drew a hemicycle of music practice rooms around an outdoor amphitheater and stage—the one outdoor space regularly shared by the entire school. (It is used for performances and as a place where children can wait for their parents to pick them up.) Another hemicycle rounds the sharp northeastern corner of the site, creating a courtyard for the art studios. It attaches to the long, narrow, two-story 1960s structure, which has been adapted for dance instruction and which faces another new courtyard. The auditorium and its ancillary spaces link the dance building to the music and administrative buildings.

Sun-shading devices respond to pragmatic need in surprisingly expressive ways. Transition points offer peek-a-boo views and willful if sometimes bewildering juxtapositions of sun and shadow, columns, piers, and screens. Each gesture, along with the splashing of fountains, draws the visitor to the next unfolding of experience.

See the February 2002 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Escuela de Bellas Artes de Carolina

Location:
Carolina, Puerto Rico

Gross square footage:
63,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$10 million

Client:
Municipality of Carolina,
Hon. José E. Aponte-De la Torre, Mayor

	Architect: Davis, Fuster Arquitectos 63 Santa Cecilia San Juan, Puerto Rico 00911 Tel: 787-728-6660 Fax: 787-728-6615 www.davis-fuster.com jrcdavis@hotmail.com
From left to right: J.R. Coleman-Davis Pagán, Nataniel Fuster