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Yale University Sculpture Building Gallery
Yale University Sculpture Building and Gallery
KieranTimberlake inserts a daylight-filled, high-performance jewel box within an urban fabric, strengthening an arts hub.
The $36.5 million new home for Yale University’s sculpture program might be the only project that has won LEED Platinum from the U.S. Green Building Council without its design team even trying, jokes Stephen Kieran, FAIA. Shortly before construction began, consultants realized such a distinction, well above the client’s target of Silver, was within reach. “We didn’t sit around counting points,” says Kieran, partner at KieranTimberlake Associates (KTA), Philadelphia. He credits the achievement to an integrated design process and a tight, 21-month schedule for programming through occupancy. “The ideas had to click and come fast. We didn’t have time for second-guessing.”
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This need for speed was a byproduct of the logistically complex shell game that is part of the university’s $500 million capital plan for the visual and performing arts: In its first year after completion, the sculpture building would serve as swing space for the architecture school while Paul Rudolph’s 45-year-old Art and Architecture Building was under renovation by New York City–based Gwathmey Siegel & Associates.
One of the larger and more long-term goals of the university’s roughly decade-long arts construction program is to increase interaction among the various disciplines. To that end, plans for the sculpture facility included moving it from another part of campus to the site of a former surface parking lot a short walk from the Yale Repertory Theater, the Art and Architecture Building (now Paul Rudolph Hall), Louis Kahn’s University Art Gallery, and his Center for British Art.
The project brief called for individual studios for graduate students and undergraduate sculpture majors, offices, classrooms, and a gallery. The building needed to include shop space for wood, metal, and nontraditional media, such as video. In addition, city regulations mandated that parking be included.
Formal name of project: Yale University Sculpture Building and Gallery
Location:
New Haven, Connecticut
Gross square footage:
Studio & Gallery: 55,000 sq.ft.
Garage & Retail: 131,000 sq.ft.
Completion Date: September 2007
Owner: Yale University
Architect:
KieranTimberlake
420 N. 20th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19130
Tel. 215-922-6600
Fax 215-922-4680
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