Architectural Record — "At Spelman College, A Studio Gang-Designed Building Seeks to Bridge Divides"
“Today Spelman College will break ground on the Studio Gang-designed Center for Innovation and the Arts, a new academic building that combines STEM and arts programs under a single roof. Located on the southern edge of the school’s Atlanta campus, the center is designed with a variety of public programs on the ground floor that its architects hope will foster connections between the school and the adjacent Westside neighborhood.
Spelman, founded in 1881, is the country’s oldest private, historically Black women’s college, and the center will be its first building located just outside a set of walls that have long enclosed the campus. . . . The 84,000-square-foot, three-story building incorporates a set of reddish steel sunshades that emerge perpendicular to the façade, framing the building’s structural bays and recalling Southern porches. Their diagrid structure will cast a variety of angled shadows across the façade and through the center’s interiors, lending it a light, contemporary feel appropriate for the school’s first new academic building since 1996.”
