Located in the historic 1895 Rouse Department Store building, the interactive arts center provides space for public performances and film screenings as well as dance and digital studios for faculty, students and community members. The center includes a 100 seat screening room, atrium gallery/non-traditional theatrical space beneath a 40-foot high skylight, state-of-the-art recording studio, sprung wood floor dance studio, and live/work space for visiting artists. One of the key features of the center is the seismically safe storage space for some of the most vulnerable collections of glass-plate negatives held by the UCR/California Museum of Photography. The first challenge that faced the design team was the lack of complete drawings of the historic building. Many existing structural conditions were not detectible until after construction began. The entire building, made of unreinforced masonry, had to be seismically retrofitted as well.
Awards
- 2011 Excellence in Structural Engineering Merit Award for Historic Preservation, SEAOSC
- 2011 Renovation/Historic Preservation/Adaptive Reuse Citation Award, AIA-Inland California Chapter
- 2011 Historic Preservation Award Winner for Adaptive Reuse, The Old Riverside Foundation
