VAPA at Fifty

Course Description

Summary

In 1976, Bennington inaugurated the Visual and Performing Arts Building, a remarkable facility that embodies the ethos of Bennington’s educational philosophy. Over the past fifty years, VAPA has undergone significant transformation, adapting to new programs and emerging technologies. This studio, led by faculty emeritus Donald Sherefkin, will draw on archival documents and critical texts to explore the intellectual and architectural history of VAPA's conception and design—from the initial project brief to its completion and continued evolution. Students will construct drawings and models to investigate its underlying modular system and capacity to generate complex spatial configurations. The studio, whose research will support a Usdan exhibition, will culminate in proposals that imagine future incarnations of VAPA. 

" ... why not think in terms of a continuous whole, something that would be neither one big building nor forty small ones, but both—something supple and wandering—partly indoors and partly outdoors ... not exactly one building, not exactly many, not exactly a building at all, simply a stream of energy rising and falling with areas of concentration and areas of expansion."  From a 1965 letter by trustee and alumna Elizabeth Brown '37, before the hiring of VAPA architect Robertson Ward, Jr.