Plans for Rhode Island School of Design’s Chace Center, a $46 million project intended to expand the RISD Museum and create new galleries, classrooms and public spaces, have been scaled back due to rising construction costs, school officials said this month.
The building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect José Rafael Moneo, is the largest undertaking by RISD in years, and the centerpiece of a major fund-raising campaign launched in 2002. Its brick-and-glass design, however, has also been the subject of intense debate.
Now, President Roger Mandle said in a letter to the RISD community, the Chace Center is going to be smaller, with a less dramatic design. A fact sheet shows it will be 43,000 square feet, rather than 60,000, with five stories instead of six. And the proposed glass top, the building’s most controversial feature, is gone.
The new projected cost is $43 million, including the Chace Center – to be erected on a narrow parcel on North Main Street – and renovations to adjacent buildings.
Hope Alswang, director of the RISD Museum, said the design changes were “driven essentially by costs.”
“Steel and building material [prices] have gone up incredibly in the past year,” she said. “The project went beyond what we could afford.”
Nevertheless, Alswang said the new design is “less blocky” and “somewhat more respectful” of its surroundings. “The building is going to be much more integrated into the streetscape,” Alswang said.
“And like any project that has been [discussed] over a number of years … the reality of this project, like many architectural projects, is that it just gets better as it’s worked through.”
RISD’s board of trustees approved the new design, also by Moneo, at its Feb. 4 meeting. In his letter, Mandle noted that the Spaniard’s new concept had retained “most of the functions” of the previous design, “with little reduction in their scale or effectiveness.”
The new plans still include new museum and student art galleries; a floor for the museum’s collection of prints, drawings and photographs; a 200-seat auditorium, classrooms and studios, a shop and a café. A proposed stair tower has been eliminated, and renovations to the third floor of the museum’s Radeke building will create space for a lecture hall and galleries. A bridge will connect the Chace Center to the existing museum at that level.
Mandle said that despite the cutbacks, there were several improvements in the new design, including a larger, “more open” plaza between Memorial Hall and the new building, which will provide greater visibility of 19th century architect Thomas Tefft’s facades.
According to RISD’s Web site, the Chace Center is intended to strengthen RISD’s role in art and design education. The lobby would serve as a “crossroads where students and faculty rub shoulders with off-campus visitors,” and would eliminate the need to walk up College Hill to enter the museum or student galleries.
“We are exceptionally pleased with Moneo’s new designs, which symbolically and practically unite RISD’s campus at its very heart,” Mandle wrote in his letter.
Alswang said that site preparation for the project will begin in June. The groundbreaking is slated for Oct. 7.
Additional upcoming school construction projects planned include upgrades to the College Building, at College and North Main streets, and the Bank Building, next to the Chace Center site. According to Mandle’s letter, those projects will begin once construction plans are completed.
