Yann Ranaivo

The News Journal

The Delaware College of Art and Design in downtown Wilmington is making small expansions that could later trigger bigger and more significant projects for the two-year school.

Next to DCAD, developer Buccini/Pollin Group is putting up a $6 million, five-story apartment building at 606 N. Market St. DCAD, which is known for its majors in photography, illustration, fine arts, animation, interior design and graphic design, will occupy the first floor of that building.

DCAD President Stuart Baron said the school will house sculpture studios there.

"It enables us to enhance our fine-arts program," Baron said. "We were hoping we can provide space right in front to display the students' work."

The Buccini/Pollin apartment building is expected to be done next year – Baron hopes by April.

DCAD is also renovating itssecond floor at its 600 N. Market St. home. The floor, where work started last year, was unused by the school and is being improved to house classroom, computer lab and office space.

One of the second-floor's key features will be mobile walls that can be adjusted to divide the area into separate rooms or turned into one large space, Baron said.

Baron didn't give an exact timeline for when he anticipates the second floor to be ready.

DCAD, the Longwood Foundation and the Laffey-McHugh Foundation have all put $500,000 into the project. DCAD is seeking more outside money to cover the remainder of the project, which is expected to cost a total of $650,000 to $680,000, Baron said.

With the addition of the walls and doors still outstanding, DCAD has already installed the electrical and heating systems and two bathrooms.

Baron expects the latest additions to improve the student experience and hopes it can help the school's year-to-year enrollment growth.

"At some point in the future, we may be in need of more program space," he said, adding that more of that space will probably come about seven years down the line.

Meanwhile, the school is looking at renovating the Saville building – one of DCAD's two dormitories – at 521 N. King St. to accommodate student growth, but won't start work on that five-story structure until the student body grows from the current 200 to 275, Baron said.

Some students are welcoming the current DCAD projects, saying that they enhance the school's already unique setting.

Madeline Davis, a second-year illustration student, said she hopes the second-floor improvement allows certain programs to expand operations and, in turn, create additional space for existing departments such as the library.

Davis, who lives at the other DCAD dorm at 707 N. King St., said the student housing and classroom sizes are among several things that stand out to her when comparing the Wilmington school with other colleges.

DCAD students like that the school's apartment-style units don't include the typical "cinder block" walls seen in many college dorms.

Davis, who has visited other campuses, said her room, which she shares with another student, is probably about twice the size of other college dorms. She said some of the second-year student dorms are also even closer to real apartments, coming with full kitchens and laundry appliances.

"It's just perfect," she said. "It's a perfect size for two people to live in, while other dorms are like half the size of what we have for four people."

Davis said she the smaller classes also allow for closer interaction with professors, which leads to more critiques.

"We get a lot of feedback," she said, adding that the interaction can better prepare students interested in later transferring to bigger art schools such as the Pratt Institute in New York, where heavy critiques are common.

"Having a big critique would be something I'm completely comfortable with because we do it so much here at DCAD," she said.

Eunjin Cho, a first-year fine-arts major who grew up in Europe and has been living in the United States for just three months, said she sees DCAD as a good starting point to other opportunities.

Cho is interested in working in fashion, a field in which she said art studies would help.

"It's not that I really wanted to completely major in fine arts," she said, "but what I learned from here I could add to other things."

Contact Yann Ranaivo at (302) 324-2837, yranaivo@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @YannRanaivo.