Westinghouse Charter High School Arts Academy

The Westinghouse Arts Academy, a private preparatory academy for the arts with a focus on visual art, theater, and dance, purchased a vacated 1928 high school facility to accommodate their growing enrollment. Phase 1 of the multi-year, multi-phase project consisted of gut-renovation of a portion of the facility to provide new instructional spaces, studios for the visual arts, dance and performance spaces.

In keeping with the academy’s self-directed, team-based learning curriculum, the educational environment was carefully designed to accommodate group-based work in an unstructured learning environment that encourages self-exploration, creativity, and chance encounter. The rawness of existing structural components was exposed and juxtaposed against architectural interventions that utilize bold colors as elements in an otherwise neutral space. An emphasis was placed on the flexibility of spaces to serve as a studio, a gallery, or a performance space all at once. 

After the first phase of construction was complete, a vacant school building was re-purposed that had served both elementary and high school levels. The initial phase of construction created core areas for the high school level charter program. A “Commons” area features a variety of casual seating arrangements for social and small group study and learning activities. It supports and connects adjacent spaces, including a media center, a large group instruction space, and the cafeteria servery.  The first phase of design and construction also provided a dance studio and music lab and refreshed the building’s classrooms.