Wolfe Center for the Arts

Snøhetta Architects – Wolfe Center for the Arts, Bowling Green, OH USA, 2011

The Wolfe Center has a unique program that unites a wide range of artistic studios in a socially enterprising facility designed to encourage lively interaction among students and faculty. Plans for the building include three performance spaces: a proscenium theater that will provide space for large-scale productions of musical theater, opera, and classical theater; a studio theater to present a more diverse artistic program, including theater for young audiences and productions of new plays; and an actors’ theater to provide space for experimental productions that integrate spoken word and body movement with digital and sound technology.

Snøhetta has created a large open hall that greets the visitor from the main entrance. Spacious and sunlit, the lobby offers views towards the lounges, classrooms and studios of the art, music and theatre departments on the second level. Situated in the heart of the building, the proscenium theatre seats 400 people and can be used for a variety of performance programmes. It is designed in the style of the large Broadway halls found in New York City and London. To meet the highest contemporary criteria for a theatre of this type, Snøhetta is working in close collaboration with the internationally recognised theatre planners Theatre Project Consultants and Akustiks.