The NEW NOONAN studio offers students the opportunity to design a new kind of space for art and public life. The aim of the project is to provoke and cultivate in-depth design inquiry into questions regarding the relationship between architecture and art, and environment and culture. These in turn prompt a series of interrelated questions regarding audiences and reception of architecture and art within the public realm; questions regarding site specificity with respect to changing uses, constituent user groups and the extended context of a particular project; questions regarding the emergence of new kinds of spaces and modes of exhibition sparked by newer genres of art such as ‘Street Art’; and ultimately, questions regarding the relationship between space designed for the making of art and space designed for the experiencing of art.The architecture of building typologies associated with the arts in some form or other has evolved and expanded over time at a relatively rapid pace. This includes a wide range of buildings, from high profile, high budget museums, galleries and venues for high value visual arts, performing arts, foundations for the arts, or even the storage of arts, to more pragmatic facilities accommodating education of the arts (facilities such as CCA and many others), to lower-key and/or locally-oriented art studios, galleries, maker spaces and community art centers.  The New Noonan project will span across this typological spectrum. A key component of the studio project’s programmatic makeup derives from the in-progress transformation of the former shipyards at Pier 70 into a new San Francisco neighborhood, wherein the existing Noonan Building – an eighty-year-old former shipyards administration building repurposed in the 1980s as two dozen artists’ studios – is marked for demolition. As such, an important aspect of the mission of the New Noonan studio project is to provide a new home for this community of under-resourced artists.While San Francisco has a great collection of higher-profile museums and arts venues, the number of independent art studio and gallery spaces in the city has dwindled over the past couple decades, mainly due to upward shifts in cost of living and land values. Meanwhile, within the public realm a burgeoning collection of street art and murals has emerged shifting the way in which creators, patrons of the arts, and the public traditionally interact. Additionally, the restrictions placed on art institutes due to health concerns around large public gatherings, along with the conversion of plywood filled storefronts into urban gallery walls has generated a new platform and accessibility for both artists, activists, and communities. It is in the spirit of these emergent street-side galleries and platforms for localized discourse that the New Noonan will look to inspire ways of thinking about the integration of public art while providing a permanent home for and the aforementioned canonical arts related programs and the soon to be displaced artist community.  The studio will also focus attention on questioning the ways in which public art is traditionally incorporated into the built environment and look to foster paradigm shifts from the typical private developer and commissioned artist standard to a dialogue about new platforms for public forum, participation, activism, plurality, and inclusivity.

Visit Workday to view this information.