The Dartmouth provided an update on the Visual Arts Center, and the designers have an unlinked project page that states:

A new facility for the college’s Studio Art and Film and Television departments, the Visual Art Center represents the consolidation in of two related programs for the first time in the college’s history. The new center occupies a prime location and consequently must function not only as an educational space, but also as a new entrance to the both the campus and the arts precinct. An 80,000 square foot building, stretching along a length of Lebanon Street from the Facility Operations and Management department to Spaulding Auditorium in the Hopkins Center, the new building is given a sizable portal that frames the existing Hood Museum complex and functions as a door to the south entrance of the campus. Commercial programs will mix with the educational functions along the street to further enhance the town’s Master Plan.

Rogers Marvel Architects have added some images of the buildings they proposed in their 2000-2002 arts master plan. The plan helped suggest the siting of the Visual Arts Center currently in design by Machado and Silvetti.

The Zahm Memorial Garden, which filled the sunken space in front of the Hinman Boxes alongside the Inn, has been redesigned as the War Memorial Garden by Saucier + Flynn. The WWII/Korea memorial, a granite plaque, has occupied the end wall of the Inn since it was moved from under the Hood’s upper bridge in the early 1990s. The school moved the Vietnam Memorial, a sculpture, from the Collis Center to the garden. The Class of 1945 also gave the garden a plaque.

The firm of Jonathan Marvel ‘82 (Rogers Marvel) has made available photos of a model of their master plan for the arts district (ca. 2002).   The design foresees addition to the east and west ends of Spaulding Auditorium, the replacement of the Hop studios (and Charles Moore’s Courtyard Cafe), and, most notably, an extension of the Hop’s entrance facade to the west that would double the width of that facade on the Green and provide much-needed infill for the gap in the street line.

The Hood Museum would be extended south to Lebanon Street.   A view to the southeast from near the site of Brewster Hall allows a glimpse through this Hood extension and into the courtyard.   Though a master plan is only a projection, the Visual Arts Building on Lebanon Street is in progress by Machado and Silvetti.

[Updated 08.30.2005.]

Dartmouth will build a new visual arts building on Lebanon Street east of the Hopkins Center according to a press release.   (See the Downtown Hanover Vision for a general idea of siting; Brewster Hall presumably will be demolished for this project.)   Studio Art and Film and Television Studies will move into the building when it is completed.   The Dartmouth reported during February 2004 that Machado and Silvetti Associates would design this building; the firm’s Matthew Oudens, project architect for an addition to the Getty Villa and the award-winning Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library (more images), is listed as the project architect.

The Valley News reports on the largest construction boom in recent memory, with $180 million in College and Town projects underway.

Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Hart praises the World’s Fair architecture of J. André Fouilhoux and Wallace K. Harrison (designer of the Hopkins Center) in the New Criterion 23, no. 5 (January 2005).   The sibling space of the Hop’s Spaulding Auditorium, the General Assembly Hall at Harrison’s UN General Assembly Building in Manhattan, has been appearing in papers recently.

This month’s Dartmouth Life has an overview of the nine largest projects underway, with images of several of them.   Two that have received little press lately but seem to get the go-ahead here are the Visual Arts Center on Lebanon Street (Machado and Silvetti) and the Tuck School dormitory/classroom complex that sounds bigger than when first announced:

The facility will consist of three connected buildings: the east and west residential buildings, and the central classroom and learning bulding.

That facility will be connected to the existing Tuck complex and designed by the firm that designed Tuck’s most recent addition of Whittemore Hall [more], Goody Clancy.

Hopland altered slightly.

Charter pages altered slightly.

North Campus updated.

The Trustees have budgeted for a late-2004 construction project (Maynard Street dormitories) and construction during 2005 (Kemeny Hall/ Haldeman Center and Gym fitness center expansion).

The Trustees also have budgeted for the 2005 planning of the dining hall north of Maynard, a new dormitory on Tuck Mall, new biology buildings and the Hop expansion.

The school is continuing with Machado and Silvetti Associates‘ plans to expand the Hop, The Dartmouth reports.

Perhaps the most architecturally-interesting news is the announcement that the school is selecting an architect for a new arts building, presumably in the vicinity of the Hood and Clement.

The College has given the go-ahead to begin building the Kemeny Center for the math department as well as an adjoining building for a group of academic institutes, according to President Wright.   Construction on the NoMa dormitories and dining hall will begin by the fall of 2004.   The addition to Sudikoff also will get underway.

The Facilities and Physical Infrastructure and Student Lifesections of the new strategic plan, “Dartmouth College: Forever New” include proposals for new buildings, including a Hopkins Center expansion and a Tuck School dormitory.

President Wright noted several facilities projects underway or contemplated in his Annual Report to the General Faculty:

• Thayer School addition
• Cancer Center at DMS/DHMC
• Residential and administrative space at the Tuck School
• Kemeny Hall (mathematics, on Shower Towers site)
• Academic Centers adjoining Kemeny (see above)
• Incremental space for Computer Sciences
• Arts facilities improvements (study under way by Rogers Marvel Architects)
• Life Sciences building (a “shared facility” that “bridges the Arts and Sciences and the Medical School”)
• Classroom renovations, ongoing
• Renovations to Alumni Gymnasium and Thayer Dining Hall
• Heating Plant capacity expansion
• New parking deck

A master plan for arts facilities around the Hop is underway by the New York firm that designed Kate Spade’s shops, Rogers Marvel Architects.

Hopland essay removed from Rants & Schemes and posted on its own.

A history of Tuck Hall (McNutt) posted in Rich appendix. [Update: the information has since been removed.]