Project Description
The new Gearan Center for the Performing Arts at Hobart & William Smith Colleges is a building with, to use a theatrical term, many “personas.” It is a new gateway to the Colleges, one of the first buildings one sees when approaching the campus. It exists on the town/gown line of its host community, Geneva, NY, a jewel of a town in New York’s Finger Lakes Region, and is meant as a cultural resource not just for the HWS community but for the larger regional population.
The building brings together multiple performing arts disciplines that were once dispersed or in substandard accommodations. So now music, dance, theater and film are brought together, and find their focus in a vibrant new atrium that serves not just as a meeting place for students but a venue for informal performances and fruitful spontaneous encounters between students and faculty. Like perhaps no other subject, learning in the performing arts takes place outside of the classroom.
The design of the building takes its cue from the surrounding structures and the deep architectural traditions of HWS. It features a steeply sloped roof, multiple dormers, a cupola that directs light deep within the structure and an 80-foot tower that marks the entrance and provides a dramatic soaring interior space for teaching and performances.