hMa

Red Hook Center for the Arts is a public art gallery, performance space, and art education center in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The facade of Red Hook CFA is aluminum frame with glass infill. The glass floats within a free-standing limestone wall. This wall frames a public art gallery and its functions, including art openings. Viewing the West Ninth Street elevation, a steel and concrete stair bridges from the entrance to the public art gallery, one half flight above and below. During openings visitors linger in the lobby, on the stair, and in the gallery above or below.

A skylight marks the threshold between the Gallery and the rest of the existing building, which hMa also renovated. The curved edge of the skylight reflects light onto the gallery wall below. An adjacent freestanding wall penetrates the two stories of the gallery.

A second floor indoor / outdoor theater that had been a basketball court hosts neighborhood theater groups. The theater proscenium opens to the inside and out to a landscaped area behind the building. The stage incorporates state of the art rigging apparatus, lighting, and accommodates indoor and outdoor performances. The lower level of Red Hook CFA houses classrooms for arts instruction, a dance studio, a library, a commercial kitchen and lunchroom, and a computer graphics lab. Red Hook CFA makes a place for theater, performance, art, art education, dance, and radio broadcasting in Red Hook.