Classes Start Feb 2 at New Campus
January 11, 2015
Classes start Monday, February 2, 2015 in the newly renovated Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design. The culmination of eight years of behind the scenes work and a $15 million capital campaign, construction on the renovation of the historic Federal Building with a contemporary design by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture took just a little over a year.
While students have been on Winter break, construction has continued at a brisk pace. These photos of the building from December 30 show how the new design brings so much light into the building—by opening the tops of the ground floor arched windows, uncovering expansive skylights, and installing a ceiling of glass in the new atrium with its new cable-hung mezzanine.
Students will walk hundred-year-old marble-lined halls on the way to classes in double-height painting and drawing studios, wired classrooms with internet speeds ten times faster than the current campus, new recording booths, animation labs, and green screen studios. They’ll attend visiting artist lectures in the Mediatheque black box theater, gather in the new Albert Solheim Library, the second-floor New Commons under original sawtooth skylights, and in the 2.5 story Atrium with its Grand Cru cafe. Students will be able to show work in a number of project spaces, galleries, and critique spaces throughout the building.
PNCA’s new North Park Blocks Campus includes the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design, at 511 NW Broadway, Museum of Contemporary Craft at 724 NW Davis Street, and ArtHouse student housing at 33 NW Park.
And PNCA will welcome the greater Portland community to our new home on March 5, 2015 for our first First Thursday celebration in the new building, opening a new exhibition, Justseeds, in our new 511 Gallery.