Yamacraw Institute of Building Arts

Program - Educational | Urban Invigoration | Workshop

Scale - 22000 sq ft

Context - 2023 | Savannah, GA

Studio - Grad 2 | Professor Jason Alread

In a context of an anticipated vertical expansion, the Yamacraw Institute of Building Arts stands as a screened, stilted volume that supplants its southern entry firmly on the sloping ground plane whilst projecting its northern face of public engagement to gracefully inset its structure within a historical brick shell allowing the studios to hover above its prior program. This is an organizational gesture that acknowledges the ensuing demands of the future development and identity of a molting Savannah industrial district while politely reinforcing the historical built environment of this urban threshold. Programmatically, the institute emphasizes experiential learning as the primary mode of education which places the more traditional modes of learning, lecture halls and classrooms, as loose fit objects that sit within and protrude a singular, decompartmentalized experiential learning hall. The beacon of the project, a slate-clad tower that contains the lecture hall and vertical circulation, pulls above the cranked rooflline to insert itself within Savannah’s underlying system of smoke stacks that stitch the city’s paramount destinations.