Dartmouth College’s Black Family Visual Arts Center houses the college’s studio arts, film, and TV studios programs. The four-story facility features an auditorium, teaching and production studios, classrooms, exhibition space, a screening room, and faculty and administrative offices. The diverse spaces and programmatic needs of the building required several unique systems to meet program and energy efficiency goals.

Cornerstone’s commissioning process allowed each MEP system to be tested without loads. Cornerstone also used its auditorium commissioning experience to determine the proper ventilation rate for comfort and noise. Ventilation rates were determined to be insufficient for the underfloor ventilation displacement system being used, so rate increases were recommended to the design team. By resolving this issue before construction was complete, it prevented an expensive future alteration.