Renderings for Reimagined & Expanded Hopkins Center for the Arts Unveiled by Dartmouth and Snøhetta

Expansion and Modernization of Existing Arts Center Will Support 21st-century Performing Arts Creation and Collaboration

Dartmouth and Snøhetta have revealed the first renderings for the forthcoming expansion and redesign of the Hopkins Center for the Arts (the Hop), a project that will create a renewed gateway to the campus’s thriving Arts District. Designed to bring together artists and audiences, the rejuvenated and modernized Hop will build on a historic legacy of groundbreaking, interdisciplinary creativity by providing new practice and performance spaces, increased connections to surrounding arts buildings, as well as upgraded accessibility and mobility throughout the project. Along with state-of-the-art digital and broadcasting capabilities, the potential for interactive audience experiences, and increased rehearsal and production areas, the expansion will allow artists and audiences alike to create and enjoy contemporary forms of expression while complementing the Hop’s original architecture by Wallace K. Harrison. Snøhetta’s expansion works alongside the playfully expressive existing architecture while also preserving the building’s iconic arches and presence on The Green, as well as its beloved spaces like the Top of the Hop, Moore Theatre, and Spaulding Auditorium.

Welcome, gather, create 

The Hop introduces visitors to a multifaceted arts and culture district that connects The Green at the center of campus with the town of Hanover, serving as a front door to the campus as well as a vital place of gathering for visitors, staff, and students. To extend The Hop’s welcome, the design reaches out to the adjacent streets of the campus and its surrounding New England small-town urban fabric, drawing inspiration from nearby mountains and native ecologies to celebrate its unique genius loci. The experiences of visitors, Dartmouth students, and the people of Hanover are all shaped by the region’s geography, and by its rugged natural beauty, which serves as a striking foil to the refined lawns, stately buildings, and accomplished arts practices of the campus. This combination of the rugged and refined is reflected in our design. The exterior plaza, taking inspiration from the gracious curves of the mid-twentieth century building, is sculpted for intuitive movement to guide visitors towards places for gathering, meeting, and entering. Designed as a platform to elevate the daily lives of students and faculty, the plaza welcomes visitors and offers a glimpse into the dynamism of the arts processes happening inside the building.  

The plaza connects visitors to a new entry that expands inside the Hop to create a central meeting place linking the existing building spaces with new facilities dedicated to enriching the creative process. The new lobby, dubbed the forum, creates a vibrant social space that will be active with students, faculty, and staff throughout the day, and with audiences before and after performances. A central stair links the forum with the second-floor, connecting the new Recital Hall and a Performance Lab, two venues designed for innovative and interactive performance events, with the ground floor and plaza. The 150-seat Recital Hall is designed as a glass-enclosed lantern that overlooks the plaza and offers stunning views of the Baker Library Tower while looking into the Sugar Maples on The Green. Its tapered arch-framed windows are created using an innovative, curved mullion system, allowing for ample daylighting of the flexible seating configurations in the Hall. The space, outfitted with bespoke finishes and refined details, also offers state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment that will facilitate the creation of student-led performance media while transforming the Hop into a broadcasting center for digital performances. 

A level below the forum sits the new Dance Studio, a partially-submerged rehearsal space with north-facing clerestory windows bringing in natural light and glimpses to the plaza tree canopy. As the Hop’s first purpose-built dance rehearsal space, the Studio’s 24-foot ceiling heights and well-lit interiors will offer the ideal place for dance troupes to perfect their routines. Our design also refurbishes the Hop’s 900-seat theatre, Spaulding Auditorium, while meticulously upgrading the Top of the Hop, a beloved gathering space. Several spaces on the lower level of the Hop, including the Theater Rehearsal Lab, will be reconfigured and redesigned as part of the project. 

Craig Dykers, Snøhetta Founding Partner said, “The voices of an ensemble, the production team for a dance video, and audiences themselves all represent the creative potential of diverse participation. We are excited to expand the Hop's pioneering legacy as a venue for emerging forms of artistic collaboration and creative expression by bringing new rehearsal and production spaces to the building, ensuring continued support for a variety of perspectives and ways of making.” 

Snøhetta’s expansion of the Hop represents the latest improvement to the Dartmouth Arts District and follows the creation of the Black Family Visual Arts Center, completed in 2012 by Machado Silvetti, and the renovation of the Hood Museum of Art, redesigned by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects in 2019. Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2022, and the new, transformed Hop will reopen in 2025. During the construction process, the Hop will continue to offer a range of in-person performances and programs utilizing spaces throughout the Dartmouth campus and beyond.  

The expansion and modernization of the Hop is the latest performing arts venue designed by Snøhetta that envisions interdisciplinary arts collaborations as dynamic interactions between public space, performance facilities, and audiences. These projects include the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet (2008), the Wolfe Center for the Collaborative Arts at Bowling Green State University (2011), the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen's University (2014), the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech (2014), and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Powell Hall Expansion (2025).  
 

About the Hopkins Center for the Arts  

Situated on the Green at Dartmouth, the Hopkins Center serves as a hub of performing arts and film for the campus and New England region. A leader in experiential education, it is dedicated to bringing together visiting artists, resident artists, student ensembles, and academic departments to produce and present work that represents diverse voices and perspectives and engages with a wide spectrum of artistic forms and ideas. It acts as a laboratory for creative experimentation and an instigator for exploring the connections among different artistic disciplines, the Dartmouth curriculum, and the wider community.  

About Dartmouth  

Founded in 1769, Dartmouth is a member of the Ivy League and consistently ranks among the world’s greatest academic institutions. Dartmouth has forged a singular identity for combining its deep commitment to outstanding undergraduate liberal arts and graduate education with distinguished research and scholarship in the Arts and Sciences and its four leading graduate schools—the Geisel School of Medicine, the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business. 

 

######## 

 

Aerial view of the transformed Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, featuring a new wing and plaza with inviting and flexible performance and gathering spaces that embrace the needs of today’s artists and audiences. Courtesy Snøhetta & Methanoia.
The reimagined north facade honors the building’s iconic historic architecture and creates new, contemporary spaces for music, dance, and multi-disciplinary arts inside and out. Courtesy Snøhetta & Methanoia.
The forum is the Hopkins Center for the Arts’ new central convening space, providing a new orienting core for the building and conveying a vision of openness and invitation to the community to engage with the power of the arts. Courtesy Snøhetta & Methanoia.
The Performance Lab will be the site of multidisciplinary performance innovation at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, boasting the latest in sound, lighting, projection, and broadcast technologies. Courtesy Snøhetta & Methanoia.An entirely new space at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, the Recital Hall establishes an exceptional venue for the creation and presentation of musical performances and features spectacular views of the iconic Baker Library Tower. Courtesy Snøhetta & Methanoia.

Press Release-Dartmouth Hop-Renderings-Credit_Snohetta and Methanoia.zip

ZIP 48 MB
Download

Antonio Pacheco

Snøhetta

Share

Get updates in your mailbox

By clicking "Subscribe" I confirm I have read and agree to the Privacy Policy.

About Snøhetta

For almost 40 years, Snøhetta has designed some of the world’s most notable public and cultural projects. Snøhetta kick-started its career in 1989 with the competition-winning entry for the new library of Alexandria, Egypt. This was later followed by the commission for the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, and the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center in New York City, among many others. 

Since its inception, the practice has maintained its original transdisciplinary approach, and often integrates a combination of architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, product design and art across its projects. The collaborative nature between Snøhetta's different disciplines is an essential driving force of the practice.

Today, Snøhetta has a global presence, with studios in seven locations spanning from Oslo to Paris, Innsbruck, New York, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Melbourne.

Snøhetta is currently working on a wide range of international projects, including the Shanghai Grand Opera House, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Dakota, Harbourside redevelopment in Sydney and La Croisette in Cannes, to name a few. 

Recently completed works include Vertikal Nydalen in Oslo, Beijing City Library, the renovation of Musée national de la Marine in Paris, Orionis - the planetarium and observatory of Douai, Airside in Hong Kong, Esbjerg Maritime Center in Denmark, 550 Madison Garden and Revitalization in New York, as well as Volum lamps for Lodes.

Some of Snøhetta's previous projects include Ordrupgaard Art Museum expansion in Denmark, the Cornell University Executive Education Center and Hotel in New York City, Le Monde Group Headquarters in Paris, including the wayfinding and signage, Europe’s first underwater restaurant, Under, the redesign of the public space in Times Square, the expansion to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lascaux IV: The International Centre for Cave Art, Powerhouse Brattørkaia and design for Norway’s new banknotes.

Snøhetta’s working method simultaneously explores traditional handicraft and cutting-edge digital technology. At the heart of all Snøhetta’s work lies a commitment to social and environmental sustainability, shaping the built environment and design in the service of humanism. Every project is designed with strong, meaningful concepts in mind – concepts that can translate the ethos of its users and their context.

Among many recognitions, Snøhetta has been awarded the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award for the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, and the Aga Kahn Prize for Architecture for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In 2016, Snøhetta was named Wall Street Journal Magazine's Architecture Innovator of the Year, and the practice has been named one of the world’s most innovative companies by Fast Company two years in a row. In 2020, Snøhetta was awarded the National Design Award for Architecture, bestowed by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2021 and 2022, Snøhetta’s Forite tiles won the Sustainable Design of the Year by Dezeen and Best Domestic Design by Wallpaper* in 2022, and the wayfinding system for Le Monde Group Headquarters was acknowledged with Monocle Design Awards. In 2023, Snøhetta won a number of awards for the Esbjerg Maritime Center and was named Architects of the Year at the Monocle Design Awards, in 2024 included a number of awards to Beijing Library and the BIA 2024 Award to Snøhetta and in 2025, Snøhetta was recognized with the OPAL Special Award for Sustainability, among others. 

Disclaimer: All materials provided by Snøhetta are intended exclusively for editorial use to communicate the specified project(s). The use of this material for commercial or third-party purposes is strictly prohibited. No material may be edited or altered from its original state in any manner. Credit must be given for all content used, acknowledging Snøhetta and/or the photographer or creator as the source. By using Snøhetta's press material, you agree to these terms and conditions.

 

Contact

Snøhetta Akershusstranda 21, Skur 39 N-0150 Oslo, Norway

press@snohetta.com

snohetta.com