SLC.edu / Magazine / Fall 2004 Issue / Teaching the Visual Arts / Open Doors

Open Doors

By Celia Regan ’79

The Monika A. and Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Visual Arts Center opened its doors in September—new doors that had been installed just a few months before, shiny and fresh-painted, just like everything else in the new building.

Inside Heimbold Open-air ideas: the garage doors open up in critique and classrooms to help the ideas flow. The rear facade is clad in zinc and local stone.

How many doors? Not as many as you’d think in a 60,000 square foot building because, in the Heimbold Center, the studios are always open.

Grass ceiling: The terraced grass roof of the lower level helps to cool the building Darkroom sinks have special vents to reduce chemical exposure

Channel glass, made from recycled material, in the painting studio

It’s specifically designed to break down barriers among visual arts media, and features open classrooms and moveable walls that encourage students to see and experience the work of their peers in painting, sculpture, photography, filmmaking, printmaking, drawing, visual fundamentals, and digital imagery. Large garage-style doors open to let the outside in.

Skylights at the top bring light to the spaces below

Exterior wood slats-from renewable forests-filter sunlight Skylights at the top bring light to the spaces below

The free flow of ideas across thresholds—and minds— is at the heart of the Heimbold Center.

Our thanks to the following donors whose gifts made possible the greening of the Heimbold Center as of August 2004:

Barbara B. Cohn MA '70 and Bertram J. Cohn
Vivian and Strachan Donnelly
Josephine A. Merck '69
Margaret P. Parker '60
Edith Cowles Poor '43 and Charles Lane Poor
Marilyn M. Simpson Charitable Trust
Joanne Woodward '90 and Paul Newman through Newman's Own

The clerestory windows of the painting studio-seen here from the roof-are surrounded by zinc It’s a high-performance—or green—building, an environmentally friendly structure that sustains most of its basic needs. The Heimbold Center is heated and cooled by geothermal wells—dug 1,500 feet into Yonkers bedrock; special venting systems reduce exposure to chemicals and vapors; in many areas, artists will work with safe alternatives to toxic materials. And it was designed to make the most of natural light.

There is an abundance of natural light, enough to illuminate many of its studios until dusk. So much light, in fact, pours into the building—through windows, skylights, glass garage-style doors, and the atrium—that metal and wooden slats are angled over some of the panes just to tone it down.

The Heimbold Center, designed by Susan T. Rodriguez FAIA, Partner, Polshek Partnership, Architects LLP, is massive in scope yet modest in silhouette, slipping in under the site’s sheltering old trees. It rises just two stories above Kimball Avenue, and more than half of its space is underground. In fact, when students relax on the structure’s front quad, they are actually lolling on the grass-covered roof of the lower level.

The atruim floods the building with light Inside, there’s a space for everything.

For students and teachers:

6 dedicated teaching, studio and support spaces, which include
- Painting - a 2,070-square-foot studio
- Photography - 4 darkrooms and a daylight shooting room
- Printmaking - Artist’s Books Studio and a printmaking shop
- Sculpture - Shops for wood and metal, and kiln, paper-making and plaster rooms
- Visual Resources - Visual Fundamentals studio, visual resources library, digital lab
- Film/New Media - Soundstage, animation room, media conversion lab, media production work space, 7 editing rooms and a small screening room
7 ateliers, where studio teaching takes place
5 critique rooms, large and small
3 seminar rooms for visual culture classes
1 digital classroom
21 faculty offices