CLEVELAND ART INSTITUTE mvrdv

FACTS
Location : Cleveland, OH, USA
Year : 2007-2008
Client : Cleveland Institute of Art
Program : 5.000 m2 Art Gallery, including studio space, galleries, auditorium and offices
Budget : Undisclosed

ABOUT
Lately many cities are commissioning and building eye-catching Museums of Arts. Each museum aims to draw
attention, even leading to some competition between museums. Architecture plays a significant role in this
development. It is one of the outspoken visual ways to show the museum to the world, and advertise its function as a
public place. Its interiors act as the ultimate stage set for the art, balancing between modesty that serves the art and
exuberance that complements the art. Many building styles have been explored: anywhere from modest white
buildings to sculptural buildings to animistic buildings.
The project scope includes the remodeling of the current Institute of Art (the historic McCullough Building) and the
construction of an adjacent expansion. The integration of the historic structure is crucial. The program for the existing
building includes a Future Design Center, exhibition spaces, student services, computer facilities, conference rooms
and offices. The new expansion accommodates an auditorium, gallery spaces and administration office spaces. A
minimum of LEED silver is required.
The proposal is to extend the warehouse with another warehouse, following the structure and rhythm of the historic
building, a slab of four layers along the un-attractive former backside of the historic building which is covered by the
new addition. Near the ends are elevator cores and stairs that connect the floors, in-between the cores long column
free spaces, ideal spaces for arts and flexible for future change. In order to accommodate the main entrance and to
add character to the building it curves in a wave over the main entrance. This wave creates efficiently two auditoriums
on the ground floor, located perfectly at the entrance allowing large crowds easy access. On the three upper floors the
wave creates an exciting environment to study and work, the terraced floors allow for multiple arrangements, from
open plan offices to office cells, connected by a series of stairs and wheelchair ramps.
Avoiding to become a competition for the historic building the extension keeps at its extremes a respectful distance to
the historic structure and approaches it towards the centre, emphasizing its middle with the main entrance. Except for
a bridge on the highest point of each floor the two buildings never touch. The extensions exterior is an echo of the
historic buildings rhythm and respectfully sober at the outer ends where it is close to the historic faade. At its long
side the wave adds character to the extension, providing for a clear main entrance and allowing the interiors variety
whilst being highly functional.

The goal for the addition to the McCullough Center is to create rugged, flexible studio spaces in an environment that
can be quickly reconfigured as artistic practices and technologies change in the 21st century and to encourage
interdisciplinary thinking. The CIA did not ask for a new identity but for a project that responded to its identity and
integrated the much loved historic building in a respectful way.

CREDITS
Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries
Fokke Moerel, Bart Millon, Joao Amaro

Partners:
Co-architect / Facility Office: Burt Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Structure: Barber Hoffman, Columbus, OH, USA
Management: The Ferchill Group, Cleveland, OH, USA
Costing: Davis Langdon, NY, USA

http://www.mvrdv.nl/en/projects/367_cleveland_institute_of_art/#
Blending humor, simplicity and bridgelike engineering, the Cleveland Institute of Art expansion envisioned by Dutch architect
Winy Maas hunches up in the middle like a giant inchworm or caterpillar.

The Cleveland Institute of Art added momentum to the revitalization ofUniversity

Circle Friday by unveiling plans for the $53 million expansion and renovation of its
McCullough Center on upper Euclid Avenue.

The four-year art college has raised nearly half the money for the project in cash,
pledges and tax credits and hopes to break ground in May, said David Deming, the
school's president.
"We're excited, we really are excited," he said. "It's very gratifying to arrive at this
moment. It's something the faculty, administration and trustees have been trying to
figure out for 20 years."
When the project is finished in 2009, the art institute will vacate its aging and outmoded
Gund Building at 11141 East Blvd., opposite the Cleveland Museum of Art, and sell or
lease the property for uses that could include a luxury condominium.
The expansion of the McCullough Center, in effect, will unify the art institute in a single
campus for the first time since 1981.
The art institute project, designed by architect Winy Maas of the leading Dutch
architecture firm MVRDV, will anchor the eastern edge of Case Western Reserve

University's $300 million Triangle development, also called the University Arts and
Retail District.
The goal of the Triangle is to create a vibrant new residential, cultural and retail zone.
The 8.5-acre development will be anchored by the art institute expansion on the east
and on the west by a new building for the Museum of Contemporary Art
Cleveland.
"There's a whole district-in-waiting that's just going to be lit up by MOCA and CIA," said
Chris Ronayne, director of the nonprofit University Circle Inc. "These are all iconic
assets that will breathe life into the neighborhood."
The art institute's expansion, to be built by developer John Ferchill, will add a new
80,000-square-foot structure designed by Maas to the west side of the Joseph
McCullough Center for the Visual Arts at 11610 Euclid Ave. The art institute has
occupied the building, a former Ford Model T factory, since 1981.
The McCullough Center will be renovated with new galleries, classrooms, studios and a
library.
The expansion next door will be a long, low, rectangular box framed in glass and steel. It
will arch up in the middle like a gigantic inchworm to create a covered entrance. An
auditorium, cafe and classrooms will be located on terraced floors above the arch.
Deming called the Maas design a creative reinterpretation of the McCullough Center.
He's confident it will be approved by the Ohio Historic Preservation Office and
theU.S. Department of the Interior for roughly $11 million to $13 million in state
and federal tax credits. The credits are critical to the project.
The art college has raised an equivalent amount in cash and pledges, and is confident it
can raise a similar amount by this winter. That would bring funding to 75 percent of the
project's cost, the goal set by trustees for the go-ahead, Deming said.