Midtown Arts & Design Alliance
The Midtown Campus—a vacant twentieth-century arts and design university in Santa Fe— is being redeveloped into a community-centered hub for arts, education, and cultural exchange.
Leveraging public-private partnerships, the campus is being reimagined to support Santa Fe’s creative economy through shared resources and programming.
While Santa Fe is globally recognized as a center for the arts, sustaining this identity requires geographically focused, equity-driven investment in the city’s creative community. Strong connections to the surrounding urban fabric are crucial to incubating and sustaining creative practice and local cultures. The Midtown Arts and Design Alliance (MADA)—a block in the northwest corner of the campus—will co-locate creative nonprofits and underrepresented voices to expand access, build capacity, and deepen impact across the city.
MASS worked closely with campus leadership and 15 local and regional nonprofits through workshops and focus groups to shape a design responsive to the needs of future nonprofit tenants and their users. The design connects creative professionals with youth education and job training through intentional placement of gathering spaces, pathways, and viewsheds. New materials extend Legorreta’s original architectural vision while emphasizing fiscal responsibility and a low environmental footprint.
95% of MADA’s square footage will be in adaptive reuse spaces, minimizing the project’s embodied carbon. Building operational energy use targets will be 20% below benchmark, supported by on-site renewable energy systems including PV, geothermal, and a microgrid. The landscape is organized around principles of habitat rewilding, outdoor environmental comfort, and long-term sustainability.
The future campus will be accessible, responsive, and rooted in community needs—embodying shared values and stewardship through a transformational network of connections.
