The Cohen Center for Creative Arts at Rye Country Day School is a collaborative, interactive place.  It reflects the School’s philosophy that “to educate is to do more than teach.”  It unites the Middle and Upper School’s previously separate arts programs into one central location.  Its placement on the campus, south of the Lower School, creates a new quadrangle and reinforces the campus concept of interconnected outdoor spaces.

The design of the Center is based on the idea that the central glass corridor is a two-story gallery where students can socialize and interact with faculty while viewing the projects on display.  The building has dedicated spaces for the visual arts, digital arts, performance arts, manual arts, and STEAM programs. These spaces allow students to develop skills critical to education in the 21st century: collaboration, leadership, public speaking, and creativity. 

The first floor features 200-seat black box experimental theater used by the drama, dance, and music programs. The second floor contains three light-filled art studios and a makerspace studio which serves as a creativity lab for STEAM and design projects.  This space includes traditional and computer-guided equipment to help inspire new modes of design thinking, hands on learning, and invention.