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Integrated Arts Center, Henderson Hall and Theater 101 at Virginia Tech

Blacksburg, Virginia

Higher Education, Integrated Arts

LEED Gold Certified

In 2004, Virginia Tech completed planning for a new Arts Precinct that would gather the arts in a cohesive district at the front of the campus immediately adjacent to downtown Blacksburg.  This planning work coincided with a focused effort by the University to re-think its arts programs and develop greater cross-disciplinary links that leverage the University’s strengths in technology and innovation.

Virginia Tech’s new Integrated Arts Center anchors the southeast corner of the University’s new Arts Precinct.  The 35,400 square-foot facility combines the renovation of the existing Henderson Hall with the new Theater 101 Building to coalesce previously dispersed programs for the School of Visual Arts and the School of Performing Arts into a new interdisciplinary center with strong connections to Blacksburg’s neighboring downtown.  The new center provides flexible high tech spaces for performance and rehearsal, spaces for exhibits, studios for the fine arts, labs for graphic design and digital fabrication, a costume shop, a lighting lab, and a scene and design model shop.  It also includes practice facilities and faculty space for music, facilities for art history, seminar spaces and classrooms.

The new Theater 101 Building is carefully designed and positioned to reorient the entire arts center and create a prominent address along College Avenue facing downtown Blacksburg. The building’s steps and lobby engage the street and provide a venue for exhibits and impromptu performances.  The new building also thoughtfully nestles into the ‘L’ shaped plan of the existing renovated Henderson Hall to create an ‘arts’ courtyard with strong connections between indoor and outdoor performance spaces.  The landscape planning for the center also reinforces the western edge of a large open space that serves as a ‘village green’ adjacent to downtown.

The Integrated Arts Center (combined Henderson Hall and Theater 101 Building) was the first LEED certified project on the Virginia Tech campus and received LEED Gold certification in 2010.  Isaac Campbell of OFFICE 52 planned, programmed and designed this project while a Principal at Bora Architects.