SFA News - Millersville Performing Arts

The Visual and Performing Arts Center at Millersville University has been designed to foster interdisciplinary engagement in the arts for the campus and the community.

The new building is a performing arts center for the University's Music Department, a new 310-seat concert hall, a new art gallery for Millersville’s Art Department, and a new theater for drama and musical theater within a renovated 50s-era auditorium. The project emphasizes the teaching environment and exploits teaching opportunities and interdisciplinary activities throughout the building. Every space, from the theater catwalk and lighting control room to a hallway lounge, was recognized as a potential classroom or performance venue and was designed to meet this vision.

The Center also holds a grand, two-story entrance lobby and a 310-seat concert hall.

Multi-use rehearsal and recital halls and an art gallery round out the project’s multidisciplinary approach. A monumental stair connects the first level to a mezzanine lounge and the building’s second level, which will feature faculty studios, classrooms, a piano lab, music library, and Music Department administrative offices. The 60-year-old  existing auditorium, which has been fully renovated into a 700-seat theater-auditorium, is the largest seated venue on Millersville’s campus.

Congrats to the Spillman team for a job well done, and for completing another incredible performing arts venue.  Photography/Copyright by Matt Wargo.

 

Material Process Product - Keeping It In Perspective

 Architectural Representation-Keeping It In Perspective

The computer has become a powerful tool which enables us to sell vision with greater clarity, speed and accuracy. This capability allows us to see what we want to see. However, not necessarily what we need to see. Beneath the glossy reflectivity and seductive qualities produced by digital representation lies the fourth dimension often overlooked - the human experience.

 

Making a successful environment which embodies the human experience strikes a balance between the speed of digital representation and the traditional 2D representation. 2D representation is a slower, abstract and more contemplative approach. It enables the designer to clearly focus on the fundamentals of proportion, human scale, rhythm, hierarchy, mass/void relationship and detail. The art of placemaking becomes a carefully choreographed dance between mind/hand/pencil and mind/hand/mouse, coupled with a keen understanding of building material and system assembly.

Building systems, materials and their methods of assembly have always played a critical role in our practice. For us, designing a building is not about how it looks but how it works. Moreover, how it ages. Material choices and their methods of assembly can bestow a building with a richness and lasting aesthetic thus transcending the tool (digital imagery) utilized to sell the original vision. Herewith, you will find a unique perspective from Spillman Farmer Intern, Pat Ruggiero. Pat shares his experience with architectural representation as it relates to his internship in our office. Pat has been with us since High School and will soon be graduating from Syracuse University. He has spent time learning the discipline of hand drawing at The Barnstone Studios and also spent time interning with EFGH NY and Rick Joy Architect.

Towards a Process - Software Dirt
"The power of speculative drawing lies in the fact that it is open to interpretation, both prior to and after the built construct."  James Corner, Field Operations

Rendering, 3ds Max + Photoshop. Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

Social media and applications of the computer have commoditized work-of-art images. Today, someone with little artistic background can apply preset filters to a photograph taken with an iPhone and produce something with artistic merit. The image can be shown to a vast audience and consumed instantaneously. This commoditization has led to architectural practice's emerging from a time of tension between when computer generated images were a novelty and a time when hand-produced drawings were a dying art.


Farnsworth House, Rendering, 3ds max. Peter Guthrie, 2009

 

 

German Pavilion, Interior perspective, Graphite illustration on board. Mies van der Rohe, 1929



With phenomena like Instagram and an increased media presence fueling our visual culture's appetite, there is a growing market and expectation for stunning imagery to represent architectural design. And while these types of images are immersive in atmosphere and depiction, they fail to offer any speculative ideas in the design process.

Rendering, 3ds Max + Photoshop, Herzog & de Meuron, 2012

The desire for these images has split the design process into two parallels; stunning imagery output and speculative interpretation through hand drawings.



Sketch, graphite on trace, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

 

 

Rendering, 3ds Max + Photoshop, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

 

This methodology is a departure from a similar demand for architectural representation in the seventies and eighties, when an economic recession limited architectural work to the practice of "paper" (or non-built) architecture.

 

Crawford Residence, Conceptual Drawing, Ink on paper, Morphosis, 1988

Because actual buildings were not expected, drawing became an alternative form of the practice. They collapsed the distinction between representation and the represented, using a single artifact to interpret and reflect the design, but also to communicate its purpose and intent. The resulting strain of architecture was able to both see and act to reconsidered spatial and sociological relationships.

Plug-in City, Ink and gouache on photomechanical print, Peter Cook & Archigram, 1964

The use of computer has completely expanded the relationship between represented and representation. Buildings exist digitally as full scale sets of data - a proxy for the actual built work.

Interface, 3ds max, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

Software manipulates this data and converts it to two dimensional representation of the building.

Interface, 3ds max, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

 Thus, software is the new graphite and erasers; tools for manipulating design. The key is how to use them to skew the absolute precision of the computer to produce speculative results.

Output, Sketchup, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

The process of the "innovation" project was an opportunity to experiment with how to exploit computer generated artifacts for design speculation, thus seeing the software, itself as a material to mold and craft. By exploiting computer flaws computer output was leveraged to establish the accuracies and givens of the design situation, but also see possibilities and relationships unable to be comprehended by only hand drawings. When necessary, the same program can produce polished imagery.

 

Rendering, 3ds Max + Photoshop, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

The result is reconsidering the process as not a means of one drawing (paper architecture) or a dichotomy of sketching vs. rendering, but of acting in the middle with software to produce unexpected results and more comprehensive layers of design.

 

 

 

Rendering, 3ds Max + Photoshop, Spillman Farmer Architects, 2012

Living in the Brownfield - Love letter to plywood

Love letter to plywood. By Tom Sachs. Directed by Van Neistat, 2012.

Spillman was shortlisted for the Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning, and Design project and we've been fine tuning our message about the importance of material to our practice. Plywood has been a long time personal favorite material for me, and I thought this video communicated some essentials. Congrats to the team and good luck at the interview.

If you want to see more, or learn more about the artist Tom Sachs, I recommend starting at his website...I'll never forget the afternoon I came face to face with the Unite d'Habatation scale model realized in foamcore, dont' miss that one! 

http://www.tomsachs.org/

Material Process Product - The Intern Effect

Part one of a two-part series on summer interns at Spillman Farmer Architects.

Unlike most apprentice programs in other design firms, Spillman Farmer Architects' intern development program nurtures and values thought, while immersing our apprentices into our process of making buildings. Much like their education, our design process starts out as series of abstract and clear diagrams. The final diagram becomes the framework from which all design decisions are made.

Here, you will see a window into our process through the eyes of intern Dan Silberman. Dan recently shared one of his SFA experiences while working on the Visitor's Center for the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary - an incredible 2600 acre setting for one of the world's first refuges for birds of prey.  Dan's thoughts on his experience follow below, this was his first internship at Spillman Farmer Architects and he's returning to his studies at the University of Philadelphia this fall.  His contributions this summer were greatly appreciated by the studio and our clients.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is currently updating their master plan with the help of Spillman. The new visitor center is a major component of this master planning process, as it proposes new program space and improved wayfinding. The approach was focused on embracing the sanctuary’s uniquely sacred character that results from its isolation in the forest, its small vernacular structures, and its trail, which winds between layers of historic structures and geography.

A series of studies led to an approach of dispersing the program along the trail. This references the splitting of boulders by ice that formed Hawk Mountain. It also creates an experience that is revealed to visitors in fragments as they weave through the program. It allows the construction to occur in phases. And, it splits the architecture into small-scale structures characteristic of the sanctuary.

Further studies arrived at a scheme that ran the trail through the existing Visitors Center and extruded the new program in pieces along the extended geometry of the existing building. The extension of the east/west axis allowed for passive solar strategies on the architecture’s south face. Also by referencing the form of the existing building, its existence will be inscribed in the geometry of the new structure and one day its own ruins along the trail, building yet another layer of the sanctuary’s history. Lastly, a tall hearth was implemented to create a gathering area for the groups of visitor’s and guide those along the trail while allowing the architecture to keep its burrowed presence in the landscape.

Living in the Brownfield – Second Space Arts Presents Art at Church

Second Space Arts in Philadelphia sent us the following information on their next show, go check it out!   “Second Space Arts invites you to the artists' reception on Saturday, August 11th, from 6-9 PM, for our summer exhibit, Art at Church: an invitational, which features selections from many of the artist/studio-mates of our curator, Tim Gierschick. The group of works include painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography" by the artists listed below.

Tegan Brozyna – painting (collage and acrylic on canvas)

www.teganmbrozyna.com

Keith Crowley – painting (oil on canvas)

www.bridgettemayergallery.com/artists/keith-crowley

Rubens Ghenov – painting (oil on canvas)

www.rubensqghenovworks.blogspot.com

Timothy Gierschick II – painting (latex, enamel on panel)

www.gierschickwork.com

David Johanson – photography

www.davidjohanson.com

Emilie Keim – Painting (oil on canvas)

www.emiliekeim.com

Katy Matich – lithography

www.katymatich.com

Rob Matthews – silverpoint

www.matthewstheyounger.com

Nate Pankratz – painting (acrylic on panel)

www.nathanpankratz.com

Matt Sepielli – painting (oil on canvas)

www.matthewsepielli.com

Benjamin Volta – digital collage

www.benvolta.com

the church studios - the collective above in their own environment
http://thechurchstudios.blogspot.com/

As always, we advocate supporting the arts and the artist.  Stop in to see the show or drop them an email to tell them what you think of their work.  Now is always a great time to add to or begin a collection.

SFA News - Jury Comments

Jury Comments:

The jury loved this building for its design and its

message. The design captures the energy and utilitarian beauty

that the best of industrial architecture once offered. At the same

time, it demonstrates the power that a truly successful marriage of

architecture and program can exert in bringing new purpose and

hope to the most abandoned parts of our urban community.

Living in the Brownfield – MusikFest 2012: Spillman on Tap at Young the Giant

As part of our community service and continued support of the ArtsQuest mission, the team from Spillman Farmer will be volunteering their services and expertise (read, serving beer!) on opening night of MusikFest 2012 at the Young the Giant show.

Come out and see the show and ask us about our “made by spillman” program that we’ll be featuring tonight on some custom t-shirts.  “made by spillman” is the moniker for our ventures into design/build, graphics, and furniture production.

This year the MusikFest Café is open FREE to the public throughout MusikFest 2012, if you have not seen a show here yet now’s the time to do it….a perfect marriage of sound and vision (the view is to die for!).  Go Fest Yourself people and enjoy free live music in one of the premier cultural destinations in the nation.