The Honnen Arts Hub is a complex adaptive re-use project that transforms an unused, open air modern-era Hockey Arena to create an interdisciplinary center for design innovation and fabrication for Colorado College (CC). Honnen Arena was built in 1970 as a concrete thin-shell vault structure with a clear span of 180 feet and was closed in 2022 due to the hockey program’s move to a new facility. Programming workshops with faculty and staff across fine arts, sculpture, digital design, and art history departments helped develop a multi-disciplinary program to include CC’s Creativity and Innovation, 3D Arts, and Design Studies programs. Studio spaces, a major new fabrication space for wood, metal, and ceramics, faculty offices, seminar rooms, and a public gallery now reinforces and completes a pedestrian “Arts Corridor” bridging several creative arts programs which had previously been isolated. The design creates a contemporary outward facing identity for interdisciplinary arts at CC with a new public entry at a prominent urban corner. A new transparent building envelope enables artwork in a public gallery to be visible from the street, while the double height interior studios and workshop spaces connect visually and physically with an outdoor work yard.
