Come winter, blizzard conditions aren't uncommon in the Minnesota heartland near St. Joseph, home to the College of Saint Benedict, a 94-year-old Catholic college for women. But no matter the season, there's always a whirlwind darting about campus in the sprightly, octogenarian person of Sister Colman O'Connell.

Sister Colman, as she's fondly known, was already a fixture on the bucolic, 292-acre campus back in 1962. A Saint Benedict graduate, she had been teaching here less than 10 years and already been promoted to head of the school's theater department. That's how she came to know Curtis Green.

As Sister Colman tells it, Green and his business partner, Dick Hammel, were talented young architects from Minneapolis. They drove north one day and strode confidently across campus to make their pitch for a new residence hall the college wanted to build. But they were late–so late that the nun who met them at the door informed them the issue already had been decided, but please come in anyway. The two upstarts walked in, charmed the committee, and left with the commission.

Unlike the 513-person corporation that Hammel, Green & Abrahamson (HGA) has become today, the practice that Hammel and Green were representing then was just getting off the ground. The architects were inexperienced but impressive in their thoroughness: Sister Colman recalls how they insisted on interviewing students, not just the administration and staff. So when it came time to expand the campus further with an ambitious fine-arts center, it seemed irrelevant that the small-but-promising office in Minneapolis had never done a performance theater. All that mattered, says Sister Colman, was this: “We knew Hammel and Green and thought they were a smart pair.”

The sisters set their sights high, seeking a sophisticated performance hall for the student body of fewer than 500. Green and Hammel were even more ambitious, convincing the college that its active fine-arts program could support an auditorium for 1,000 people, along with studio space for the theater, art, and music departments.

“All three programs were important from the start,” says Sister Colman, stressing Saint Benedict's roots. Even in its first incarnation as a tiny academy for girls, it had a stage, and theater productions were serious undertakings. (According to one account, the nun in charge had family resources that enabled her to import a set designer from New York City.) Music and the visual arts were highly regarded in a spiritual culture that values creative expression.

To inform their design process, the architects took their clients on a sweeping tour of fine-arts facilities in the Midwest. All across Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, “We looked at the best auditoriums and the best arts centers,” says Sister Colman. Many were part of huge institutions, such as the University of Michigan, that dwarfed Saint Benedict. “Some had good music departments. Some had good theaters. But it was the rare one that had everything we needed,” she adds. Green also schooled himself by traveling to Europe and visiting Benedictine monasteries. Although his assignment in Minnesota was for a very different type of building, he wanted to wrap it in a skin that evoked the same somber mood.

Dedicated in 1964, the Benedicta Arts Center was immediately hailed as one of the best buildings of its kind. Architecture critics praised the flexibility of the center, with its 973-seat auditorium and 293-seat theater uniquely configured face to face so they could share a common flyloft, with curtains, rigging, and lighting available to both theaters. In addition, the two-part auditorium stage operated on lifts, which allowed limitless options for theatrical and concert setups. Walls in the auditorium were clad with vertical wooden slats, with movable burlap draperies behind to adjust the room's acoustics. The auditorium quickly earned a reputation for its stellar acoustics, although a 20-ton “sound isolation door” separating the two theaters proved less effective in practice than in theory.

Green's stately arts center, built in a cornfield somewhat distant from the other campus buildings, soon became the icon that identified the college. With its dark, severe walls and small openings for light, the center possessed monastic qualities that seemed appropriate for the campus culture. More important, it began to draw world-class music and theater to central Minnesota.

“In some people's minds, it's the signature building of the campus,” says Jim Fredricks, the college's facility manager. “Others refer to our performing arts and our building as our football team—some have used that analogy. It serves the function that big-time athletics do on other campuses.”

For decades, the Benedicta Arts Center proved to be everything the college had hoped for. But as enrollment grew and fine-arts programming expanded in scope, conflicts started to surface.

Because the building's program lacked an adequate rehearsal room, “The largest rehearsal space was the stage itself,” says Fredricks, recounting how orchestra rehearsals required each musician to carry an instrument and a chair through the building to the stage. “Fine-arts programming, dance, music, and theater all arm-wrestled for that space.”

The popularity of the center also meant that traveling theater and dance companies often displaced the students, who depended on the stage for their own needs. Although the basement level housed a warren of small rehearsal rooms, over time these dark, isolated spaces began to take on a more threatening feeling, especially after dark.

Talk of an expanded center began as early as 1998, says Tom Darnall, a retired theater professor who ultimately became a key adviser in the addition's design. The college's consulting architect was asked to develop a scheme for added space, and he came back with a sketch showing a separate black box theater and small rehearsal room, grafted to opposite sides of the original building.

Sister Colman, who by then had served a term as college president and had moved on to become the chief development officer, was skeptical. She wanted to show the plan to Curt Green, who had long since retired. A small delegation visited Green at his home, where the group sat on the porch and sipped lemonade. Green was a gracious host, but he didn't reserve judgment on the proposed additions. As Sister Colman recalls: “Curt looked at it and said, ‘Don't ruin my building.'”

Green (who passed away in 2002) steered them back to HGA, which recognized an opportunity to improve on an important building in the firm's early portfolio. The job was assigned to design principal E. Tim Carl, whose team included HGA colleague Jamie Milne-Rojek, a specialist in performing-arts buildings for colleges and universities.

“We were all moved by the prospect of adding onto [it],” says Carl. “As we got to know the clients, going through the programming phase and hearing how much they loved that building, it became really apparent that we had to respect it. That history was a real driver of this project.”

Being a strong believer in “putting the right people together at the right time,” Fredricks preselected the general contractor for the project and involved him on the building committee. Although it tends to raise costs a little, Fredricks says the advantage in getting the contractor on board early is that he comes to all the meetings. “He hears directly from the faculty and staff what is important to them. The general contractor has a real depth of knowledge about what the faculty is hoping to accomplish in that space.” Other committee members included Dean Rita Knuesel (now the college provost), Sister Colman, and Darnall, who served as a faculty representative. The committee, in turn, met with the music, dance, art, and theater faculty.

From the beginning, Carl advocated for an addition that would touch the original building lightly, while still maintaining a complementary scale and formal composition. Early studies focused on arranging the three key program elements: dance studio, music rehearsal room, and black box theater. To reduce the scale of the addition, much of the space was sunk below grade. The critical planning move: organizing all the new spaces off of a single corridor. That intervention also created the edge of a new courtyard on the north side of Green's original building.

Pushing the floor level of the black box theater down to the basement caused some early concern about getting props and equipment from the existing ground-level loading dock. But the architects' strategy was foolproof. By placing the black box adjacent to existing theater support space, they ensured easy access to the loading dock via the stage lifts in the old building.

No issue vied for attention as much as acoustics. Given the intensive use of the building, the client groups were concerned that sound from one space would distract people in another. At one critical committee meeting, Carl and Milne-Rojek used drawings and renderings to explain how the spaces would be isolated acoustically. It was important, Fredricks says, that the faculty had an opportunity to voice their concerns and that administrators and the contractor could hear them. “It was a real turning point, where people went from being skeptical to being totally behind the project.”

Resolving the building exterior also required serious effort. Initially, HGA tried to match the color of the brick on the original center, but could not do it exactly. At that point, they began to explore other options ranging from metal to wood to concrete.

A spark went off when Carl met with a metal manufacturer and installer. “They were very high on the durability of aluminum plate when used in a rainscreen system for this climate,” he says. The manufacturer presented a range of color samples in addition to clear, bronze, and black anodized finishes. But the standard colors were deemed to be too gaudy.

Instead, the architects asked if available finishes could be blended to produce new colors—and that question opened the right door. In the end, a palette of four complementary finishes was produced by double-dipping a red finish on top of the manufacturer's standard bronze colors. “And we liked the fact that the panels would play a game with the scale of the building and complement the original,” notes Carl. HGA fine-tuned the color choices by examining a full-scale mockup on site with the building committee, selecting finishes that fit well with the darker shades in the original center's brick façade.

Dedicated last September, the 28,500-square-foot, $5.8 million expansion of the Benedicta Arts Center provides the rehearsal and performance spaces needed to support the college's active fine-arts program. Its exterior is subdued and elegant, content to play second fiddle to the monumental main theater. Dark metallic panels on its front façade contrast with horizontal bands of white stucco that wrap around large ribbon windows.

Inside, the new corridor dissolves into a bridge penetrating a bright circulation space that doubles as a lobby for the new, 120-seat Colman Theater. Access to the large music rehearsal room is also from the lower level, beside a row of faculty offices that double as one-on-one lesson rooms. The dance studio, located on the ground floor, often draws viewers from the campus mall.

This was an important aspect of the project, says Fredricks, whose agenda includes making the liberal arts more visible on campus. Likewise, the construction of an amphitheater carved from the site on the north side of the addition is intended to make impromptu practices and small performances readily accessible.

Today the Benedicta Arts Center hosts 200 public events a year, in addition to academic classes, lessons, and student performances. College representatives say it is the only venue outside of Minneapolis–St. Paul that offers an annual series by the Minnesota Orchestra.

“So now this really does everything we dreamed of,” says Sister Colman. “They can have dance here, and music there, and we can have high-school kids on stage all day. Or the dance company can come for a week and it doesn't interfere with anybody. It's perfect. And besides that, it looks good.”

PROJECT Benedicta Arts Center expansion

CLIENT College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, Minn.

ARCHITECT Hammel, Green & Abrahamson (HGA), Minneapolis (Gary Reetz, principal in charge; Jamie Milne-Rojek, project manager; E. Tim Carl, project lead designer; Andrew Weyenberg, project architect; Rich Bonnin, Kari Hahn, Erik Hansen, Chris Hartnett, Matthew Kreilich, Mary Opila, Heather Sexton, and Markian Yereniuk, project team)

GENERAL CONTRACTOR Donlar Construction Co.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT HGA/Close Landscape Architecture

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Hallberg Engineering

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING Wunderlich-Malec

THEATER CONSULTANT Schuler & Shook

ACOUSTIC CONSULTANT Acoustic Dimensions

COST $5.8 million