We are currently implementing this philosophy on a larger scale at Ohio University’s College of Fine Arts. There, a multi-phase, multi-building transformation is reshaping the North College Green into a co-located arts ecosystem. The Violet Patton Arts Center anchors the initiative with a 400-seat multipurpose theatre that accommodates music, dance, and drama, complemented by rehearsal and performance spaces that open directly onto an outdoor amphitheater. But the vision extends well beyond the stage. Renovations to other facilities will co-locate historically separate departments, supporting everything from sculpture and woodshop to dance and musical theatre in spaces that are shared, adaptable, and intentionally interdisciplinary.
Breaking Down the Silos: Designing the Creative Campus of the Future
Perspective – Oct 2025
The lines between disciplines are softening in arts education.
Music majors choreograph. Visual artists compose soundscapes. Theatre students design robots. Increasingly, colleges and universities are rethinking not only what it means to study a single art form, but how campus environments can encourage a more fluid, collaborative approach to creativity, and how this better prepares students for their future careers.
As theatre planners, we’ve seen this trend reflected in the spaces we help design. Performance halls, studios, and rehearsal rooms are no longer siloed by department; rather, institutions are investing in flexible, multi-purpose spaces that serve as catalysts for artistic intersection and reflect how students already create across boundaries.
More than a decade ago, Schuler Shook participated in the planning and design of the Center for Visual and Performing Arts at Earlham College to bring art, music, and theatre together under one roof. As a small college, Earlham prioritized shared resources and multi-functional design from the start. A key feature is the 250-seat music hall, purposefully designed for both rehearsal and performance using retractable seating. These choices speak to a broader collaborative ethos: integration over isolation. The building itself becomes a teaching tool, modeling adaptability and the inherent value of working across disciplines.
Earlham College music hall as rehearsal space with seats retracted.
Earlham College music hall utilized in performance with seats fully expanded.
What’s emerging is a new kind of creative campus, where architecture enables conversation between disciplines, not just within them.
And this shift goes further than collaboration within the colleges of the arts, now encompassing collaboration with engineering and game design as more technology crosses into entertainment. While these shifts require thoughtful technical planning — from acoustic strategies to rigging flexibility to spatial adjacencies — it also demands a reimagining of how what were siloed disciplines can coexist.
Administrators in arts education, may already be navigating this evolution: discussing how to balance the needs of specialised training with the opportunities of cross-pollination. The facilities built next will shape not only how students learn, but how they collaborate, critique, and create in a world that increasingly values integration.
Theatre and dance. Music and sculpture. Visual storytelling and live performance. When the walls between disciplines come down, what rises in their place can be extraordinary.
By Kimberly Corbett Oates and Ted Ohl
Originally published in the 2025 ICfAD Annual Conference program book