The campus creates a learning environment that is sensitive to the needs of children and demonstrates the potential for community development within a depressed urban community. At the street, white walls define the arts enclave and rise in contrast to the surrounding neighborhood. The campus is secured, but not isolated. Deflections in the exterior wrapper open, inviting students to engage the complexities of the city. Within, the space of the courtyard and the studios weave a texture of form, light, and color, to inspire each individual student. The ceramics tower beckons as a symbol of the connections forged between students, the community, and the world. Conceived as an aggregate of interwoven forms, spaces interconnect around a network of plazas and courtyards. Just as important as the specific program spaces—a 99-seat black box theater, faculty offices, studios, classrooms, and larger multipurpose rooms—are the ways in which these spaces facilitate connection, dialogue, and exploration. On its north face, the ceramics tower gives way to an orange inner-volume inviting the students to explore light and color. Across the courtyard, a parking ramp slices over a gallery to expose the vibrant chromaticity of student work. In the theater, a large skylight opens to the western sky, welcoming the natural world into a dialogue with the stage. Large roll-up doors, pivoting partitions, black-out shades, and other simple features create programmatic and functional flexibility to allow multiple uses at a range of scales.The biggest threat to an innovation center is obsolescence; functional and stylistic obsolescence. So besides the professional responsibility of avoiding an extremely poor environmental performance, the rejection of the glass facade was also a search for a design that could stand the test of time. We thought the best way to fight obsolescence was to think the building as if it was an infrastructure more than an architecture. A clear, direct and even tough form is in the end the most flexible way to allow for continuous change and renewal. A rather strict geometry and strong monolithic materiality is how we thought to replace trendiness by timelessness.