The Project
ARCH 4520: Synthesis Studio Spring Semester 2018 Brown/Wilkerson/Schafer/Schott
A CULTURAL ARTS CENTER FOR COLUMBIA SOUTH CAROLINA
Introduction The Columbia Cultural Arts Center (CCAC) will be a city-owned community fine and performing arts facility managed by One Columbia Arts + History, a local non-profit organization. Located within a site adjacent to Main Street, the Center will serve as a civic anchor for a vibrant and developing corridor connecting northern downtown neighborhoods, such as the Cottontown historic district, to important city landmarks such as the Statehouse and the University of South Carolina. The Center will scaffold cultural equity in Columbia, and thus should be an unjuried, uncensored forum for the arts and education in the city. By facilitating free access to tools, technology and knowledge, the Center will be a space for the city (broadly) and the Cottontown neighborhood (locally) to come together, collaborate, innovate and experiment. The Center will work to build a just world where all people can realize their full creative potential, find their place within a creative community and have a transformative impact on the city.
Project Brief The Columbia Cultural Arts Center has a two-fold constituency. Broadly, it will support and nurture artistic and cultural expression / experiences for all citizens of Columbia. Locally, it will serve as a community anchor for the Cottontown neighborhood, providing much-needed space for community gatherings as well as a sense of identity for the district. Therefore, the programming and design of the Center should speak to the larger urban context and also be hyper-specific to its site in the Cottontown historic district.
Site This semester we will be working in the historic Cottontown neighborhood of Columbia. The address for the parcel is 2222 Main Street, Columbia SC 29201. The project site contains open space and multiple vacant structures. The Cottontown site straddles the Main Street commercial district and the neighboring historic residential neighborhood. Students will conduct research on a project site that is tightly woven into the supporting urban infrastructure, the Cottontown district’s collective identity, and one that has calls for a resilient building strategy. This is an institutional building with a requirement to provide a key civic space so the work of site analysis will be critical to the project’s larger success. The Center cannot be a simple stand-alone building, regardless of how cool it might be. It must be fully embedded in the fabric of Columbia as well as the Cottontown neighborhood – so site analysis must take this into careful consideration.
Users and Activities The Cultural Arts Center will serve a wide range of users. The largest group of users by far would be the local citizenry – artists and art enthusiasts coming for casual visits, events, or organized programming. Educational programs would range from those that encourage cultural awareness and learning to art instruction. Local schools would make up a significant user group for the educational and outreach programming. In addition to the cultural arts programming for the city at large, the Center would also house meetings and community events for the local Cottontown neighborhood. Therefore, the Center should provide civic spaces that support the interaction of the activities specific to the Center’s mission, the larger goals and objectives of Columbia, and the needs of the local residential community. As an Institution this facility must be thoroughly embedded in the city.
Project Stakeholders
One Columbia Arts + History http://www.onecolumbiasc.com/ The Cityof Columbia https://www.columbiasc.net/parks-recreation/programs/cultural-arts Historic Columbia https://www.historiccolumbia.org/about-hc Columbia Development Corporation https://columbiasc.gov/cdc North Columbia Business Associationhttp://northcola.org/ Cottontown Neighborhood Association http://www.cottontown.us/history/
