Creating an anchor for the arts
Baytown native reveals architectural plans for new building at his alma mater, Rice
Architect Charles Renfro leaned on his years as a student at Rice University when imagining a new student arts building there. Rice’s construction boom continues with plans for the newly named Susan and Fayez Sarofim Hall, which will replace the smallish industrial buildings that went up decades ago as temporary spaces for art classes.
Renfro, a Baytown native who went to Rice as a music student but wound up studying art and architecture — class of 1989 — has been waiting for just the right project at his alma mater. When the call went out for proposals for a student arts building, Renfro was certain this was the one for him.
“What we’re hoping to do is bring an anchor to the art programs.
Art Street is a shared space that will cut through the middle of the building and be both indoors and outdoors,” Renfro said of a wide, open walkway in the building’s initial concept drawings. “It’s not owned by any particular department or teacher but shared by everyone, casually and more formally. That will become a psychic heart for the program and will also become a proving ground for their work.”
This is the latest in an ongoing construction program that saw the opening of the Sid Richardson College residential tower and Maxfield Hall this year, and the Kraft Hall for Social Sciences and Brockman Hall for Opera in 2020. Other buildings finished in recent years touch on other parts of the school and its curriculum: the Moody Center for the Arts in 2017 and the Anderson-Clarke Center for continuing studies in 2014. In all, Rice has spent $1.5 billion on new buildings since 2004.
“Having witnessed Houston for decades, I’m excited there’s a shift for city making, places for people as opposed to places for workers,” Renfro said, citing the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston expansion and the recent opening of the Post Houston commercial and food hall. “The skyline has been the symbol for Houston because there haven’t been other ways to depict it. Now there are other things that are icon-
ic, such as parks, and I’m happy to be part of that.”
In his years at Rice, Renfro spent many of his waking hours in the architecture building, but he also spent time in art classes in various buildings. Though much of Rice’s campus is classic traditional architecture, the arts buildings were spare and industrial, their bohemian nature celebrated by art students who marched to their own beat.
“Because they’re on the edge of campus, they were allowed to be different from buildings in the central campus. They didn’t have to have brick or limestone or Venetian Mediterranean detailing,” said Renfro, a partner at New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro architecture firm. “The liberating quality of being on the edge of campus allowed them to flourish and become incorporated into the psyche of Rice. They were the funny uncle living on the edge of town doing weird things. You loved that he was in your family, even if you didn’t visit him very often.”
Renfro’s first step in designing the student arts hall is to pay homage to those industrial buildings, the Art Barn and Media Center by using a contemporary take on the “Butler building” — a term used to describe mass-produced, preengineered World War II-era metal structures. They’ll break ground in 2022 and expect to complete construction in 2024, with the Sarofims’ money underwriting the plans.
A first look at artist renderings of Renfro’s design shows a steel-framed structure with an open hall with skylights running diagonally, bringing in natural light and creating the feeling of being indoors and outdoors at the same time.
Sarofim Hall will be near public parking at Entrance 8 off of Stockton Street, so visitors will easily spot the building and can walk through it to get where they’re going.
“Since art is so much about looking and thinking about the world around us, it’s a great meeting spot between the public and the Rice community,” Renfro said. “A lot of people will witness Rice for the first time through here.” University President David Leebron, who announced this year that he’ll step down as president in June 2022, said he wants Sarofim Hall to make a statement about Rice’s dedication to a strong arts curriculum.
“Nothing is ever complete at a university, but in some ways, this building completes a vision for an arts corridor on campus and makes a clear statement about arts at Rice. We have a music school with a worldwide reputation, but we also have outstanding art and art history programs. … Our new opera building is fantastic, and we opened the Moody Center of the Arts,” Leebron said. “Some of it goes back to our founding: The university seal says ‘letters, science and arts,’ that’s the founding vision of Rice.”
While the new Brockman Hall for Opera is classical and traditional in style and situated near buildings of similar design, Renfro’s vision of a new arts building is based on the kind of architecture he learned as a student: modern.
It won’t be alone, renowned architect Sir David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates, whose firm has offices in Ghana, London and New York, created a modern design for the Moody Center for Student Life and Opportunity — which will be next door to Sarofim Hall — slated to open in 2023. His design is more modern but respectful of its classic surroundings. (Americans might be most familiar with Adjaye’s design for the highly praised Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.)
“I’ve been so eager for Charles to build a building on campus. We had an open competition for the architecture, and I’m so delighted with this outcome. He’s a proud graduate of Rice, and it’s important to me and to the university to have him on campus,” Leebron said. “What he’s brilliantly done is create a structure that nods to the buildings that were temporary. Some 50-60 years later, we’re building a permanent structure that resonates with those original buildings and and accomplishes the goals of today in a world where education has changed quite substantially.”
Sarofim Hall is designed as a place for art classes, with maker spaces that can be in an enclosed area or move out to the main hall for everyone to see the creative process in action, something Renfro says is important to students today. Other open spaces — for example, the building’s “front porch” — are meant to encourage gathering and potentially be a magnet for people all over campus, Renfro said.
Upstairs art studios will feel like lofts, with large windows that connect students and professors to the outside world — rooms that are open enough that they can change with time. A cinema in the building will seat up to 250 people, contributing to the film community here.
“In discussions with faculty, we’re in the honeymoon phase, but we’re quite confident this is going to be a great new space and a model for a paradigm shift for how art is taught,” Renfro said.