Dezeen spotlights future home of Yale dramatic arts

July 10, 2026

Yale University’s future home for the dramatic arts is featured in Dezeen.

Designed by KPMB, the seven-storey Dramatic Arts Building will establish a unified home for the eight programs of the graduate David Geffen School of Drama and much of Yale’s undergraduate program in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. It will also house space for the Yale Dramatic Association (“Dramat”) and a purpose-built Yale Repertory Theatre.

Historically, students and faculty of Yale’s graduate and undergraduate programs in drama and related disciplines have been dispersed across campus in repurposed facilities. For more than 60 years, the Yale Repertory Theatre has staged productions from a converted church.

The limestone-clad building will support education, production, and performance. In addition to housing classrooms, offices, and rehearsal rooms, the building will feature 400- and 100-seat theatres, supported by a rigging lab, a sound design studio, and workshops for costuming, prop building, and other aspects of production.

While the Dramatic Arts Building will provide students and faculty with modern spaces for learning and performance, it also aspires to unlock new ways of collaborating. The building’s main circulation spine, known as “Theatre Street,” will choreograph movement and encourage exchange between disciplines by bringing them into closer proximity.

“This building is all about engagement — within the drama school, across the wider campus, and beyond — and creating opportunities for dialogue and exchange among all kinds of communities,” says KPMB founding partner Marianne McKenna, who graduated from the Yale School of Architecture in 1976.

“Theatre opens up experiences, socializes ideas, and translates the issues of the day in ways that can stimulate, heal, and restore through shared human connection. The entire building is designed to support that idea.”

Read the full story at Dezeen.