Arts

VMDO designs buildings that revel in the power of the creative act. In uncovering the uniqueness of each campus we work on, we strive to create artistic spaces where a multi-disciplinary community has the opportunity to invigorate their creative processes from practice to performance.

With nearly forty years of experience in designing campus and community learning environments, VMDO thrives with each new client and challenge. One such opportunity emerged with the invitation to design a transformative performance space (Liberty University’s Concert Hall) that equally compliments and enhances a jazz trio as it does a rock band. In this project, collaborative work processes and creative thinkers combined to produce a space that integrates acoustical precision, technical expertise, structural ingenuity, and mechanical and electrical prowess to create one of the most technologically advanced concert halls in the country.

Symbiotic with our design process is our emphasis on community-building – with students and faculty, with related multi-disciplinary connections, with the whole campus, and with the surrounding community. Facilities that support arts education and performance often serve as major gathering points for a university community – spaces where the public can come into contact with expressions of place and culture in tangible ways. The creative nature of performance welcomes the public and campus community into the soul of the university.

Access to an arts education is invaluable and should be supported through finely tuned spaces that can be used and appreciated by a variety of artists, audiences, and aficionados. Art and music provide powerful creative experiences that, when tied to a university wide curriculum, can support teaching and learning in instrumental ways that express dimensionality of the human experience.