Maryland Institute College of Art Brown Center

1300, West Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD, United States

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Maryland Institute College of Art Brown Center

1300, West Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD, United States

Firm

Type

Cultural › Gallery
Educational › University Other

YEAR

2004

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

The boldly sculptural Brown Center, designed by Ziger/Snead and Charles Brickbauer, was the first new building to be constructed on the campus in nearly a century. The center’s crystalline architecture provides an appropriately dynamic image for the college’s growing digital arts department. The angular geometries of the plan were generated by site constraints and translated to the building’s elevations. The faceted exterior is clad in translucent white glass to provide solar shading and create a provocative counterpoint to the white limestone of the college’s Renaissance Revival main building which stands across Mount Royal Ave. The new structure is meant to stimulate a dialogue between contemporary and traditional forms, technologies and materials. While it may appear complex from the outside, the Brown Center is a simple plan with classrooms and other programmatic space wrapped by light-filled hallways which become exhibition and critique space for student work. This four-story concrete structure adjoins a dynamic full-height steel-framed atrium space which functions as the social heart of the facility. This main lobby in turn opens to the newly-created lawn and the historic community beyond. In addition to studio classrooms, the $16 million, 61,000 sf building houses a 535-seat auditorium, galleries, meeting and lecture rooms, a video studio, offices, and support spaces. The Brown Center and its new Plaza have together been carefully conceived to transform a parking lot into a vibrant campus center. The geometry and scale of the new facility, outdoor gathering places, fountain, and pedestrian paths all serve to gather the disparate surrounding structures into a cohesive urban place and a center of campus life.