SCHOOL OF PERFORMANCE ART

Program: Back Bay School of Performance Art

Location: Boston, MA

BAC B. Arch Thesis

The Boston School of Performing Arts is a cross-disciplinary performing arts college tailored to students from the school as well as various Boston colleges (Arts Exchange students). The Boson School of Performing Arts emphasizes a philosophy of learning by seeing and doing as well as collaborating with students from other backgrounds and creative mediums. The idea for a cross-disciplinary program came to fruition after an attempt to understand what works or productions fall under the category if performance art. This investigation resulted in realizing that many schools in the Back Bay each focus on their respected piece of a production or performance piece may consist of. For example BAC students could take a studio to build a set, while Boston Conservatory students choreography a dance performance, while Berklee students manufacture a soundscape for the production. All of these things combined result in a large scale collaborative performance.

The layout, design, and distribution of space was manifested with these ideas of seeing to learn and learning by doing. Each classroom is inverted facing the center core of the building to create visual relationships between classrooms as well as a constant view into the open theatre/performance space. The Theatre includes an open stage slightly lifted off of the ground in which students many have classes, but also doubles as the main performance space for the final semester production. Students can sit and view the stage from the large scale stair and seating modules.

The materials for the building were chosen with idea of the least amount of finishing necessary to result in spaces that con continuously change and become the background of a performance as well the foreground. Once furniture is moved, classrooms become open plan and can be manipulated by the student artists in whichever way they want. The material palette chosen gives a sense of lightness and malleability, as well as a blank canvas for students to add to.

The building employs the use of three main screen features, one on the exterior of the building which provides feed of student work to the people on the streets of Dartmouth and Newbury, one at the entrance of the building which displays a feed of the theatre space, and lastly as recording and viewing space in the library for students to record themselves performing for later viewing. These recordings can be saved to create virtual library for students to learn from.

The building is designed with the intention of a framework to crop views into and out of the building, as well as to create a visual relationships for students from each of their respected backgrounds to learn and collaborate with one and other, to make performances larger then the individual.