Salt Lake City, UT — The new Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts and Education Complex on the University of Utah campus is a beautiful, welcome addition to the campus.
The unique facility cost $37.5 million.
Completed in February of 2014, the 110,000 square-foot facility has seven classrooms, a 200-seat auditorium, six dance studios, a black box theater with retractable seating, an art studio, a costume fabrication shop and a model classroom along with demonstration space and 27 conference and project rooms.
There are also three Won-Door FireGuard™ doors that protect the elevator lobby, the adjacent corridor and the conference room entrance in case of a fire.
Okland Construction project manager Brent R. Kimball said the firm uses Won-Door product whenever the design calls for them and they always work well. In the arts complex, the FireGuard doors serve to efficiently to separate the College of Arts and Education area from the Tanner Dance Program side.
The doors are a good fit for the project and recently passed the one-year warranty inspection with no problems.
Greg Brooks, Project architect of EDA of Salt Lake
The four-story complex was built to honor and serve as a legacy to Beverley Taylor Sorenson, the wife of business icon James LeVoy Sorenson, and the complex provides a home for the College of Education and the Tanner Dance progam.
The Tanner Dance wing features four dance floors with maple flooring, ballet bars, 8′ mirrors and floor-to-ceiling windows.
The complex provides a place for training, practice, integrated research and advocacy for including arts education into core subjects.
“The completion of this building represents the beginning of an incredibly exciting endeavor for the University of Utah that has the potential to profoundly impact arts-integrated education on a national scale,” University of Utah President David Pershing said in press release pertaining to the ribbon-cutting in 2014. (See the release at: https://education.utah.edu/bts-complex.php)
“The interdisciplinary work of the College of Education and the College of Fine Arts is focused on the ongoing development of teaching models in which the arts are used to teach multiple subjects.”
At the time, associate vice-president for the Arts and dean of the College of Fine Arts, Raymond Tyman-Jones, said Utah has a long history of supporting arts-integrated education and those good works will continue in perpetuity at the new plex.
“As far as I am aware, never before has an undertaking as deliberate or elaborate as this new interdisciplinary complex been attempted, and it is incredibly exciting to be part of it,” Tymas-Jones said.
