Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building

Architect:  MSR Design

Owner:  Haverford College

Location: Haverford, Pa.

Award of Excellence

msrdesign.com

Learning in the 21st century requires active engagement that mirrors an ever-changing creative workforce. Fully developed visual and digital literacy practices enable students to move fluidly between multiple media forms, building upon source materials to create collaborative arts, scholarship, and media productions. Haverford College’s new Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building provides students, faculty, staff, and the wider community with a new, highly flexible, 24/7 learning environment of intersecting spaces designed for interpreting and making visual media.

"This is a building that is inherently about connection.  It has a spatial richness that, while inserting a new series of program spaces within an historic building, retains the experience of a single unified space." ~ Jury Statement

Located in a converted 1900 gym, the facility fronts the historic Founders Green in the center of campus. Classrooms, labs, offices, and presentation spaces encourage trans-disciplinary collaboration and experimentation in digital media, film, 3D fabrication, and material culture. VCAM represents an intersection of the physical and the curricular in which modes of seeing, understanding, and remaking the world are activated in productive combinations. The center serves as a setting where students from different disciplines can work together and engage in social dialogue and hands-on production. The VCAM facility includes exhibition and presentation spaces where students can share their work.

Additional information

Acoustical & AV Consultant: Threshold Acoustics, LLC

Civil Engineer: Nave Newell, Inc.

Code and Fire Protection Consultant: LaSalle Engineering, LLC

General Contractor: Whiting Turner

Historic Preservation Consultant: Keystone Preservation Group, Inc.

Interior Designer: MSR Design

Lighting Consultant: Gallina Design, LLC

M/E/P Engineers: Bruce E. Brooks & Associates

Specifications Writer: WC Consulting, Inc.

Structural Engineer: Keast & Hood Co.

Jury

David Van Galen, AIA, (2018 Chair) Integrus Architects, Seattle

Linsey Graff, Assoc. AIA, Ayers Saint Gross, Tempe, Arizona

Wendy Rogers, FAIA, LPA, Inc., Irvine, California

Judy Hoskens, Assoc. AIA, REFP, Cuningham Group, Minneapolis

Image credits

Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building

Lara Swimmer

Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building

Lara Swimmer

Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building

Lara Swimmer

Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) Building

Lara Swimmer

Haverford_VCAM_diagram 1

MSR Design