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Maya Lin to design new performing arts studio building for Bard College’s Fisher Center

Coming Full (Semi) Circle

Maya Lin to design new performing arts studio building for Bard College’s Fisher Center

Topped with a green roof, the sloping, ring-shaped studio building will be ensconced within a grassy landscape near the Frank Gehry–designed Fisher Center. (Maya Lin Studio with Bialosky New York/Courtesy Maya Lin Studio © 2022 )

Frank Gehry’s swooping, stainless steel–clad Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College is getting a new neighbor.

As announced by Bard earlier this week and subsequently reported by The New York Times, Maya Lin has been selected to design a dedicated performing arts studio building for the Fisher Center, which is located on the private liberal arts school’s bucolic campus overlooking the Hudson River in the hamlet of Annadale-on-Hudson, New York. Work on the $42 million facility is slated to ground break next year in a neat bit of timing tied to the 20th anniversary of the opening of Gehry’s Fisher Center, a technically complex $62 million project that took three years to complete and that now stands as an impossible-to-miss landmark on the Bard campus. The 110,000-square-foot Fisher Center houses two major theaters—a 900-seat concert hall and a more intimate 200-seat performance venue—along with rehearsal spaces and support facilities.

The Lin-designed studio building, a 25,000-square-foot facility described by Bard in a press announcement as a “laboratory for the performing arts,” is set to include five state-of-the-art studios linked by a series of informal social spaces and will “expand the Fisher Center’s identity beyond the walls of Gehry’s stunning landmark, to become a cultural campus comprising both the Gehry and Lin buildings.” The new building will take form as a spiraling, green roof–topped structure emerging from a verdant meadow near the Fisher Center. The sloping building’s multitasking studio spaces will encircle a grassy courtyard space that will be used for small al fresco performances, outdoor classes, and social gatherings, according to the school.

rendering of a circular building in a meadow
(Maya Lin Studio with Bialosky New York/Courtesy Maya Lin Studio © 2022)

“Gehry’s building has two magnificent theaters, but our ambitious program has expanded beyond the current facility, and we urgently need more space for rehearsals, smaller-scale performances, and teaching,” explained Fisher Center board chair Jeanne Donovan Fisher. “Maya Lin’s beautiful design will position the Fisher Center to leap into its third decade as one of the most vital and forward-thinking arts centers in the country.”

Partnering with Lin and her eponymous New York City–based art and architecture studio on the project is multidisciplinary design firm Bialosky + Partners Architects and theater and acoustical consultants Charcoalblue.

Lin said in a statement shared by Bard:

“I am delighted to have been selected to design the performing arts studio building at Bard. I have long admired the Fisher Center, and to be able to create a new building in close proximity to it allows me to create a quiet and respectful dialogue with Frank Gehry’s magnificent work. Frank was my teacher at Yale, and it’s particularly meaningful for me to design this new building in relation to his. I will set the studio building into the landscape, tucking it into a hillside so at first only its green roof will be visible. Yet the sloping land will allow double-height studios to open fully to the meadow and woodlands, connecting artists, students, and faculty to the landscape while creating a unique and strong architectural presence. We are designing a high performance, energy efficient, low carbon building that will be sensitive to its site, reflecting my aesthetic and my concern for the environment.”

illustration of a tapered circular building
(Maya Lin Studio with Bialosky New York/Courtesy Maya Lin Studio © 2022)

Other in-progress projects led by Ohio-born Lin, a celebrated designer best known for her memorials and large-scale environmental artworks, include the new home of Manhattan’s Museum of the Chinese in America and a sculptural water feature for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. In 2016, Lin was bestowed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by the former POTUS alongside her former teacher at Yale, Gehry.

“It’s fitting that Maya Lin, herself a peerless artist, is developing this home for artists,” added Gideon Lester, artistic director of the Fisher Center. “Intimately in touch with its natural environment, at once grounded and taking flight, her building will unfurl from the meadow like an aperture between earth and air, to create a welcoming and inspiring laboratory for artists, students, faculty, and the public.”

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