Tufts' Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center will serve as an inspiration for a new creative arts building at Brown University.
The various arts departments within the university have united to call for the construction of a building in which "the interdisciplinary potential of the arts can come together," according to Richard Fishman, the chair of Brown's visual arts department and the director of its Creative Arts Council.
Marty Granoff is a trustee at both Tufts and Brown. He is currently the lead volunteer in the fundraising effort for the new facility at Brown and was instrumental in funding Tufts' state-of-the-art music facility. His daughter is a Brown university alumna and his son Michael graduated from Tufts in 1991.
Tufts' Granoff Center, which opened in January, should prove a worthy model to look to.
It features practice rooms, rehearsal spaces, teaching studios, a music library and a 300-seat performance hall. The Boston Globe called it "the best music building of any liberal arts campus in the Boston area."
And Brown has taken notice, as its president and administrators have examined Tufts' approach to an integrated music facility.
"The president of Brown, Ruth Simmons, toured [our Granoff building], and she was very interested in what was done here," Tufts' Music Department Chair Joseph Auner said.
Designers behind the Brown project, however, plan to take a more expansive approach. While Tufts' building only houses music programs, the Brown facility would accommodate all creative arts departments.
"The idea is that all the spaces are supposed to meet the needs of all departments. That's very complex," Auner said.
As such, the Brown building will be more extensive than its Tufts counterpart.
The Tufts center cost $27 million, but the one at Brown will likely cost $43 to $44 million.
The effects of a new center could be far-reaching within the Brown community.
"I think it could impact, in many ways, nearly the entire campus," said Ron Vanden Dorpel, Brown's senior vice president for university advancement. "If you add up the number of students with a music and arts concentration, it's relatively small, but I think that it will have a wider impact because of all of the activities that will go on there."
According to Fishman, the new space will cater to a diverse range of activities. "There will be public exhibitions," he said. "There will be events in the auditorium, from performances to screenings of 35mm films."
Although Granoff has been paramount in financing Brown's proposed facility, Deborah Baum, a media relations specialist at Brown, said the building will not necessarily bear his name. "It has not been named yet," she said.
The project is still in the early stages of development, and the necessary funding has not yet been raised.
"I believe we've raised about $36 million so far," Vanden Dorpel said. "We're hopeful that we'll be able to raise all of the pledges for the building by the end of 2008."
In the meantime, the planning is moving forward, and Baum said that the university has recently decided to use the architecture firm Diller Scofido + Renfro. The firm will work closely with Brown's Creative Arts Council to decide on a design.
Some features have already been decided. According to Fishman, the auditorium will seat 220 people, and the large production spaces will fit 100. There are also plans to incorporate a state-of-the-art digital lab and recording studio and offices for artists-in-residence.
Although the completion date has not yet been determined, the designs thus far are a culmination of two years of interdepartmental coordination and planning.
But Brown officials feel it will be well worth the wait.
"As far as I know, this is the first building that will have this degree of integration of the creative arts," Fishman said.
