Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech
The new Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia has a unique program that unites a diverse range of the campus arts programs into one facility with the aim of encouraging lively interaction among students, faculty and the broader community.
The site is situated at an important juncture between the campus and downtown Blacksburg, allowing it to become a focal point for the city and a cultural magnet for the region. The landscape provides spaces for impromptu or planned performances in the natural amphitheater, the diverse planted mounds, from the terraces or at the outdoor stage near the building’s entry. The new Moss Arts Center seeks to blur the threshold between the campus and downtown, attract local residents and the University community to engage in the arts, and provide the students with the tools to experiment and innovate.
The Center will allow students’ capabilities of exploration, experimentation, and discovery through access to advanced technology for sound, visual, digital, and lighting production. The students will be able to brainstorm ideas collaboratively in the Multimedia Studio, then develop them in a diversity editing bays, fabrication, and sound and lighting studios into works of art. Shows can be choreographed, tested, and presented in this Creative Performance Laboratory, known as the CUBE, displayed in the galleries, or ultimately performed on the Center’s main stage.
