When Sheila Kennedy and J. Frano Violich, founding principals of Boston-based Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA), first stepped inside Honnen Ice Arena, they were startled by what they saw. Located on the campus of Colorado College, a small liberal-arts college in Colorado Springs, the building—a thin-shell concrete structure from 1963—had sat unused for several years after the construction of a new arena for the school’s Division I hockey team. The building, designed by local practice Lusk & Wallace, was dark, dank, and mildewy. The arena’s 80-foot-high ceiling vaults had been covered with foil-faced batt insulation. Daylight barely penetrated the rows of narrow, fiber-reinforced plastic windows, which had yellowed with age. No wonder the college had once considered demolishing the building.
The college’s new home for 3D arts (top of page, at right) was built as a hockey rink (above) and is comprised of repeating thin-shell vaults like its adjacent natatorium (top of page, at left). Photo courtesy Colorado College Archives, click to enlarge.
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