A significant factor in planning for uses like the visual arts is to optimize functionality in an indoor/outdoor studio setting.  The regional climate in Bakersfield consists of warm springs and long- lasting, mild autumns that coincide with the University’s academic calendar.  Summers average more than 110 days over 90°F, 30+ of which are over 100°F.  As such, the Arts Center takes full advantage of this by providing a variety of indoor and outdoor studios, lab and display spaces for ceramics, sculpture, drawing, painting, digital arts and printing.

Dedicated exclusively to visual arts, this independent structure is the first to be located in the new Humanities northeast quadrant.  This endeavor created a variety of unique opportunities to expand the functional boundaries of the program, increasing outdoor studio and display areas and collaborative interaction spaces, while utilizing northern day lighting.  Combined, they create a lively sense of place, completely devoted to visual arts. 

Organized along a central circulation spine, pedestrians are connected to the heart of the campus to the east, while the studios surround a central courtyard that is further defined by the minimalist covered walkways that shade and filter sunlight at the window walls and along the painting and digital studio pavilions. Above the east-west circulation spine, north facing clerestories provide day lighting into the ceramics, sculpture and shop studios, while helping to preserve valuable interior wall space not afforded by large storefront windows.

The decomposed granite courtyard is provided as an open palette for the artists’ own expression, creative collaboration and enjoyment. The ceramics, sculpture and printing studios open via roll-up doors to a large covered service yard to the south that allows for segregated, safe working areas for gas kilns, an overhead crane bay for sculpture assembly, and casting and power equipment, as well as bulk material storage. The studio’s connection to the service yard significantly increases the usable studio space.

Materials such as the sandblasted CMU and painted hardie board and steel were selected for their simple, industrial aesthetic and durability. The exaggerated, corrugated steel, mechanical roof screen also creates a vertical marker for the low profile complex, affording identity and a dedicated location for future named signage. The project exceeds the CSU’s mandate to meet sustainability equivalent to LEED silver.