Snøhetta to expand Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts

Architecture firm Snøhetta has released plans for an expansion of the Hopkins Center for the Arts (the Hop) at Dartmouth in New Hampshire.

The expansion will include a new plaza for the area in front of the centre, as well as a new building and renovations to the existing structure.

Used as a performance space for students and visiting artists, the Hop is the "front door to the campus as well as a vital place of gathering for visitors, staff, and students", according to Dartmouth.

The Hop's original building (left) will be renovated to include more performance spaces

A new lobby area, called the Forum, will sit between and connect the plaza and new facilities next to the existing structure, which was designed by Wallace K Harrison — the architect behind the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan.

With striated wooden walls and a long, curved staircase, the lobby area will connect the two floors of the new building with the preexisting 900-seat Spaulding Auditorium and Moore Theater, both of which will be renovated under the current plans.

The Forum lobby will connect the new and old spaces

"We are excited to expand the Hop's pioneering legacy as a venue for emerging forms of artistic collaboration and creative expression by bringing new rehearsal and production spaces to the building, ensuring continued support for a variety of perspectives and ways of making," said Craig Dykers of Snøhetta.

A 150-seat, second-storey structure dubbed the Recital Hall will be the most significant addition.

Meant to resemble a "glass-enclosed lantern", the hall will feature tapered arch-framed windows with an "an innovative, curved mullion system" – intended to elaborate on the glass-in arches of the Harrison design.

The new building will include the spacious Recital Hall

Underneath the Recital Hall will be a Performance Lab: a small, dark space created to facilitate multi-media performances.

The campus's first dedicated dance hall will also be part of the new build. Beneath the forum, the partially submerged space will have 24-foot-tall (7.3-metre) ceilings as well as clerestory windows that will look out into the plaza.

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The distinctive barrel vaults of the original complex will be retained, with the focus on renovation happening mostly to the interiors.

The Performance Lab will be a space for multi-media acts

This proposal joins a few notable projects on Dartmouth's campus recently. In 2019, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects overhauled Charles Moore's Hood Museum of Art, just around the corner from the Hop.

First founded in Norway and now with offices worldwide, Snøhetta has undertaken a number of high-profile designs in the US. They include a research facility for Ford in Dearborn, as well as the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, which is blended into the rolling hills of the high prairie.

The images are courtesey of Snøhetta and Methanoia.

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Populous' spherical music venue features in today's Dezeen Agenda newsletter

The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Agenda newsletter features Populous' MSG Sphere arena, which is set to become London's largest indoor venue. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now!

Architecture studio Populous has been given the green light to build a 90-metre-high spherical music venue near the Olympic Park in east London for the organisation that runs New York's Madison Square Garden (MSG).

The London Legacy Development Corporation's planning committee voted six to four in favour of the proposal, despite 852 objections submitted in opposition to the project.

The venue will have a capacity of 21,500 with 17,566 seated.

Zaha Hadid Architects' dune-like Beeah Headquarters in Sharjah features in today's Agenda newsletter

Other stories in this week's newsletter include Zaha Hadid Architects' dune-like Beeah Headquarters in Sharjah, news of SHoP Architects' supertall Brooklyn Tower topping out in New York and an opinion piece on inclusivity in design by Priya Khanchandani.

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HKS releases design for "one of the largest" Black-owned real estate projects in Hollywood

HKS Architects has released plans for a plant-covered structure in the middle of Hollywood to be built for CMNTY Culture as an entertainment and tech hub.

The 500,000-square-foot (46,500-square-metre) project will form a creative campus for LA-based CMNTY Culture, an organisation founded by musician Philip Lawrence in partnership with business manager Thomas St John, which will be one of the largest Black-owned organisations in Hollywood according to the founders.

The proposed building will occupy a two-acre (0.8-hectare) site at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue. It will house creative offices in order to bring together tech and media companies as well as production spaces, music studios and venues.

CMNTY Culture Campus will be one of the largest Black-owned real estate projects in Hollywood

"Now, we live in a new era where creatives and their audiences seek opportunities to collaborate and interact, not just in the digital sphere, but in-person," said Lawrence. "Content creators need a physical epicenter, a place that celebrates their work and the power of community."

The structure itself will have two towers connected by an elevated green space.

The stepped terraces of the towers are shown full of plants in the renderings released by HKS, which worked with landscape designer Hood Design Studio for the proposal.

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A screen of louvres made of "custom-formed" aluminum panels will drape the whole structure, swooping down from the towers to the lower elevation like a curtain.

The louvres will provide controlled shading, but also be filled with lights that will illuminate the whole structure at night.

"This will not only improve the energy model of the CMNTY Culture Campus but will also allow for lighting and media to 'broadcast' along the outer surface," HKS told Dezeen.

The main veranda of the complex which will sit between the two towers will be covered by wooden walkways with a bow-like light sculpture at one corner.

The building's exterior will be able to light up at night

"The balconies will provide excellent shading for the southern and southwestern exposure and CMNTY Culture's outdoor spaces reinforce wellness and provide ample locations for access to fresh air and the shaded daylight around the perimeter will increase comfort of visitors and artists," said HKS.

The greenery is meant to "capture water and cool the roof".

The plant-covered terraces will also soften the stepped terraces into slopes as the two towers frame the hills outside of LA.

"It was important to keep the building lower at the corner to reflect the scale of neighboring commercial buildings and open up views to the Hollywood Hills," said HKS.

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"The stepped building is meant to allow darling to penetrate the site, and overall improve the street life and pedestrian experience in the surrounding area as well," the architects added.

Within the ground floor of the building will be many of the studio spaces as well as the 500-seat venue which can all be seen from the street.

"This was an effort to reinforce porosity at the pedestrian scale," the architects noted.

HKS was founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1939 by Harwood K Smith. The studio's most noteworthy projects include Atlantis Paradise Island Hotel in the Bahamas, as well a renovation of a 120-year-old steam plant into a medical company headquarters in Toledo.

Other plant-covered buildings in the works across the world include Ole Scheeren's "hanging gardens" and a mass-timber building in Toronto by Adjaye Associates.

The images are courtesy of CMNTY Culture/HKS.

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CO Adaptive Architecture converts Gowanus foundry into flexible theatre spaces

Brooklyn studio CO Adaptive Architecture has renovated an industrial building in the New York borough's Gowanus neighbourhood to create bright and spacious theatre rehearsal spaces.

The overhauled building is home to The Mercury Store, an organisation dedicated to the performing arts. "The Mercury Store offers residencies, studio and co-working space, community and funding," according to the organisation's website.

The Mercury Store is located in Brooklyn

Originally built as a metal foundry in 1902, the 12,700-square-foot (1,180-square-metre) structure had been partitioned several times over the years, creating cramped rooms with little natural light.

The first decision that CO Adaptive Architecture made was to open the interiors to form an expansive, top-lit space.

Sunlight penetrates through existing skylights and windows

"Across the interior, previously subdivided spaces were opened up and existing windows, skylights, and clerestories were replaced or restored, permitting sunlight to penetrate all corners of the large square footprint," said CO Adaptive Architecture.

In addition to removing excess walls from the interiors, the architects also cut out the floor in half of the building, creating a tall, lofty space for rehearsals. This expansive room can be subdivided with full-height, folding doors that tuck away when not in use.

CO Adaptive Architecture added full-height sliding doors to the space

Visitors enter the building from a side alley, into a lobby where stepped, auditorium-style seating offers glimpses of the rehearsal space in the building's cellar from the entrance.

On the ground floor, there are additional, smaller rehearsal spaces available, as well as administrative offices.

Original brick walls were left in the renovated design

CO Adaptive Architecture housed the new program elements in smaller volumes built from cross-laminated timber (CLT), a type of composite wood made up of smaller pieces glued into wall panels, beams, or columns.

"This is the first project in New York City to use mass timber to transform an adaptive-reuse building, and we hope it will lead by example; using mass timber to reduce our embodied carbon and reinvigorate our aging building stock," said CO Adaptive Architecture principal Ruth Mandl.

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The insertions into the building contrast the historic shell, which the architects sought to preserve and highlight as much as possible.

Throughout the space, the building's original brick walls and heavy timber trusses were left unfinished.

A sign for Mercury Store can be seen from the street

As part of the conversion, CO Adaptive Architecture needed to re-insulate the building, which they did from the outside.

"Insulating the building from the exterior allowed us to expose the existing materials' warmth, texture, and history of use," said Mandl.

An aluminium facade was chosen to honour the building's industrial location

"We even left intact the construction spray paint annotations on the exposed brick walls," the architect added.

A new facade of aluminium panels wraps the building, honouring the industrial surroundings of the neighbourhood.

The new facade of aluminium panels wraps the building

CO Adaptive Architecture is led by Mandl and Bobby Johnston, and is also located in the Gowanus neighbourhood – an area that has recently undergone intense redevelopment, as part of a scheme to re-zone the land for uses other than industrial facilities.

Last year, New York City updated its building codes to allow for mass-timber buildings of up to six storeys. Projects that use CLT elsewhere include a tower in Sweden that the architects claim is "carbon-negative" and a new entrance pavilion for Cambridge College designed by London-based architect Allison Brooks.

The photography is byNaho Kubota.

Project credits:

MEPS engineers: ABS Engineering
Structural engineers: ADOF Structural Engineers
Acoustic designers: Charcoal Blue
Lighting consultant: SDA Lighting
General contractor: Yorke Construction
Signage and wayfinding consultants: TwoTwelve

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Stufish designing hexagonal arena for ABBA reunion tour

British architecture studio Stufish has revealed the first image of a temporary performance venue that is set to host Swedish pop group ABBA's reunion tour at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

Set to be built from mass timber, the 3,000 capacity arena will host the band's virtual reunion tour from 27 May 2022, following the release of ABBA Voyage – the band's first album in nearly four decades.

The six-sided arena, designed by Stufish, will be built on a rarely used coach park next to Pudding Mill station on the Dockland Light Railway.

Designed to be both demountable and transportable the arena has permission to be located in east London for five years.

Venue will see ABBA perform for the first time in 40 years

Although few details of the arena have been released, it has been designed to host a virtual tour that will see ABBA band members performing as "digital avatars" designed by Industrial Light & Magic.

As well as the concert hall, the site will include a box office, stalls, toilets, bars, storage and backstage facilities.

"ABBA's breath-taking arena delivers the perfect setting for ABBA Voyage, offering you a live music experience like no other," ABBA Voyage said in a statement.

"The venue is built around ABBA's timeless music and never-before-seen concert, so you can have the time of your life in general admission or have the option of a seat in the auditorium if you prefer. You can even party in style in your own dance booth."

Arena set to be demountable and transportable

A March 2020 committee report by the London Legacy Development Corporation states that approval for the demountable and transportable arena has been granted for five years.

Alongside the temporary requirement, the report outlines that "the main building would be hexagonal in form, with the massing informed by the geometry of the seating".

Stufish has created other performance venues in locations around the world. On Hengqin Island, China the studio wrapped a theatre in a gold facade, mimicking the form of traditional circus tents.

The studio has also worked on stage sets for numerous leading musicians including the Rolling Stones. The studio recently installed a rotating 10-metre sphere in the middle of the stage for British pop band Take That.

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