Mass MoCA Building 6 update

In May 2017, MASS MoCA will open its newly renovated and restored Building 6, adding 130,000 square feet of space, nearly doubling the institution’s current gallery footprint and adding new art fabrication workshops, performing artists’ support facilities, music festival amenities, and other programmatic capacities. The centerpiece of Building 6 is a series of changing exhibitions and long-term installations and collaborations with artists Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, and James Turrell, the Louise Bourgeois Trust, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the estate of Gunnar Schonbeck.

Read more on the Mass MoCA blog here.

A Puzzling Installation

Kenneth Chang at The New York Times has created a neat slideshow highlighting some of the intriguing puzzles hidden in the Kern Center. The puzzles were designed by assistant professor of computer science and game design Ira Fay, and installed in coordination with the design and construction team. Fay incorporated diverse sources of inspiration, and many of the puzzles relate to the themes of the Living Building Challenge. You can check out the puzzles and get a few clues here, or better yet, visit the building and get sleuthing!

Kern Center featured in Architectural Record’s “Sustainable Campus Development”

Over the last 15 to 20 years, the combined energies of students, faculty, and administrators have broadened the focus on sustainability at U.S. colleges and universities to encompass a wide spectrum of concerns. From a start in recycling, raising awareness, and environmental-studies programs, the higher education’s sector’s green endeavors have burgeoned to in­clude curriculum and research, planning and administra­tion, and the many facets of campus operations…

In constructing a new welcome center with administrative offices, a social hub, and classrooms at its campus entrance, Hampshire College, a liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts, perceived a fit between its institutional values and an ambitious environmental effort. The college’s recently completed R.W. Kern Center, designed by Cambridge, Massachusetts–based Bruner/Cott, is built to meet the Living Building Challenge (LBC) and has just embarked on the operational tracking year required for certification.

Read the full article at Architectural Record.

At Hampshire College, sustainability efforts reach new level

AMHERST — Well known as a progressive bastion, Hampshire College has been at the forefront of sustainability efforts long before they gained widespread acceptance.

Still, the school’s latest foray into eco-friendly practices marks a major leap forward.

The private college’s first new building in 20 years is a model of sustainability, featuring composting toilets, rooftop solar panels to power the building, and a water supply that draws on rainwater stored in underground cisterns. The building, slated to open in April, will use zero net energy, produce its own water supply, and manage its wastewater.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe