BOZEMAN COMMUNITY ART CENTER and PARK [located on Mendenhall, Black, Tracy, and Lamme] SITE PLAN ] [ BOZEMAN montana ] CONTEXT [ The block bounded by Mendenhall, Tracy, Black, and Lamme is situated on the edge of Downtown, Bozeman. It’s north side greets the North Bozeman residential community, while the south side faces the back side of the Bozeman Downtown District. The entirety of this site was chosen to design an art center, reserving each edge of the block for art to be experi- enced. By occupying the whole block, residents of Bozeman are allowed to gather, walk across, or rest relatively close to the making of art, without actually making the choice to enter the building. exterior perspective ] [ WEST ENTRY
An art center located a block of the downtown district of Bozeman, Montana. It strives to be transitional element between the dense north-side residential district and the busy downtown area to the south.
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Transcript
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] CONTEXT [
The block bounded by Mendenhall, Tracy, Black, and Lamme is situated on the edge of Downtown, Bozeman. It’s north side greets the North Bozeman residential community, while the south side faces the back side of the Bozeman Downtown District. The entirety of this site was chosen to design an art center, reserving each edge of the block for art to be experi-enced. By occupying the whole block, residents of Bozeman are allowed to gather, walk across, or rest relatively close to the making of art, without actually making the choice to enter the building.
exterior perspective ] [ WEST ENTRY
551 STUDIO NARRATIVE
invitation to observe, participate, and create
a p l a c e w h e r e u n e x p e c t e d g l i m p s e s b e c o m e t h e i n v i t a t i o n t o c r e a t e
] Critical Stance [The goal of the Bozeman Art Center and Park is to provide the residents of Bozeman with a place to observe and participate in arts and crafts directly and indirectly. The site becomes a major contributor to this position, allowing people to cut across, rest, and enjoy leisure activities around the building, without ever intending to interact with the interior. Proposing an art center with a separate program such as a park/path will lend itself to more than artists and residents seeking to learn a craft. Areas of leisure activities, cafe, and an exterior columnade that pro-vides shelter for public transportation create a dynamic atmosphere that artists and residents can mutually feed off. Integrating the community as a whole into the program of the site will provoke moments of interest in various types of arts and crafts.
] Moments [[A small child with his mother and father listens intently as they walk closer to the opening to the courtyard. The child peers in catching a glimpse of a live ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ performance. The child becomes immediately interested in the act of performing and begs his parents to sign him up for clases.] [ A grandmother waits for her granddaughter who is taking a water-coloring class in one of the art studios within the center. She decides to take shelter from the hot summer sun in the courtyard, below one of the overhangs. She rests on one of the many stone benches that wrap the courtyard. As she waits, she notices a tall narrow aperature in an oddly placed ‘box’ overlapping into the courtyard. Now interested, she stands and walks toward the reveal, listening. She hears the deep rich sound first, then catching a sliver of a young man playing a piano concerto by Saint-Saens. It reminds her of an earlier day, when she used to play quite frequently. After she had children, she no longer had time to persue her interest in classical piano. This incident reminds her how passionate she was about music. Now, having more time to spend to herself, she decides to enter the Art Center and inquire about any available piano lessons being given.] [ A college student taking business classes at MSU is returning from class on his bicycle. Being a college student, he is in a hurry to return home and make dinner. He is determined to find the shortest path, impatiently swirving into and out of alleys. He reaches the corner of the Art Center realizing that two paths for vectors on either side of the building, creating a quicker path to his apartment on the north side. As he slips through the open corridor between building and park, he notices a small window placed below eye-level. He ducks low, still riding his bike only to discover a series of workshops contained by the stone wall. He is almost instantaneously reminded of his childhood dream of building furniture, but has never had the opportunity in business school.]
These scenarios are sometimes the most influential to change in one’s life. Having experienced both the forced art class [where parents require their children to sign up for classes] and also the self discoverd art or skill that provokes immediate interest, art needs to present itself in a multiplicity of experiences. In this critical stance, the unsuspected person who discovers these ‘glimpses’ obtains a fruitful experience that they can call their own.
The form of the building itself came through acknowledging both the residential North side of Bozeman as well as the commercial characteristics of downtown. Walking from either direction offers a completely different experience. It is as if the ground plane has been peeled back on the south side of the site in order to tuck the appropriate public programs in, where as the north side has become the ‘backyard’ to the art center, lending itself to the residential community that it faces. it becomes much more about the landscape as well as exterior activities, where as the south side acts as an invitation to the act of making and observing art. The building then becomes a series of walls that have risen from the site. The walls become more pentrable towards the south side, where glazing is the primary threshold. On the north, east, and west sides, the heaviness of the earth is revealed in perceivably thick thresholds, where openings become the only way to dis-cover the mass of the walls. It is not too dissimilar to the way the residential community places itself within the blocks to the north. They set up a deep threshold that streches from the edge of the street, across the sidewalk, and up to the front porch of the common house. The design of the art center was careful not to intefere with the privacy of the residential neighborhood, and in this way only truly opens itself up in one direction.