Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center

One of the challenges of renovating any old building is locating the modern heating and air conditioning equipment (HVAC), particularly in a theatre, where you want to move a large volume of air quietly. For the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, architect Tom McDonald put this equipment in a gabled addition above and to the rear of the stage behind a heavily insulated wall. Unlike the rest of the building, this addition will be clad not in brick, but in zinc, a natural element that patinas to a soft, dark grey as it ages. As you can see in the picture, the zinc is almost complete with only louvers and slate on the roof needed to finish this part of the construction. Ultimately, louvers will fill the large opening in the middle of the addition, but right now, with them missing, it looks nothing quite so as an enormous dog house.  Which is probably what we’ll end up calling it.