The Cleveland School of Arts is committed to making a long-term impact on its students, in both academia and the arts. The new school building similarly was designed with Dri-Design VMZINC panels to impact the neighborhood and make an artful statement for decades to come. Zinc gives stability to the form and a strong aesthetic by creating a trademark feature on the public thoroughfare side of the school.
“We were asked to create a fun, exciting education facility to house the visual arts and performing arts curriculum at this school,” says Mark Schirmer, a project manager with Moody Nolan Inc., Columbus, Ohio. “The form was to inspire creativity, and a dynamic flow attributed to the multiple arts being instructed here. Dri-Design provided outstanding technical support and cost evaluations throughout the design phases and into the construction process.”
United Glass & Panel Systems, North Canton, Ohio, installed 26,189 square feet of 1-mm VMZINC Panels in QUARTZ-ZINC and ANTHRA-ZINC. ANTHRA-ZINC is a rich, charcoal black panel that offers natural color variations. It was used to clad a black box theater, emphasizing the content of the form. QUARTZ-ZINC is pre-weathered to achieve a matt-grey appearance. Both types of zinc will patina over time, with QUARTZ-ZINC getting darker and ANTHRA-ZINC getting lighter. This natural process enhances the beauty of zinc.
The new 126,000-square-foot building is 33 percent larger than the former structure—a 1910 brick building—that stood at the same site. The school, which was founded in 1981, has been awaiting its new building and operating from a temporary space since 2009.
With the new building, students now have many art-specific amenities, including studio classrooms, a black box theater, rehearsal and instructional spaces, a recording studio and choral room. Core subjects, like English, chemistry, biology and physics, also have dedicated classrooms. All of this, mixed with outstanding students and faculty, makes the Cleveland School of Arts one of the most respected and successful schools in the area.
