Displaying items by tag: arts center

An architect who has offered to buy and restore a controversial Orange County, N.Y. government building, designed by Paul Rudolph but panned by many as an eyesore, presented detailed plans Friday for his proposal to turn it into an arts center.

The county has been debating whether to demolish the building, which had been used as its government center, or perhaps renovate it. The architect, Gene Kaufman, a partner at Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman Architects in New York City, had previously announced that he hoped to restore the building. The plans presented Friday to Orange County leaders gave his detailed vision of what he hopes to do.

A new arts center will make its Miami Beach debut at 32nd Street and Collins Avenue in December 2015. Founded by Alan Faena, an Argentine hotelier and real estate developer, the 50,000-square-foot Faena Forum will be dedicated to the development of the area’s cultural programming, including the arts, urbanism, politics, science, and technology.

Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the center will be a partner institution to Argentina’s Faena Arts Center Buenos Aires. Ximena Caminos, the executive director of the Faena Arts Center Buenos Aires, will work with an advisory committee of arts professionals to fine-tune the Faena Forum’s mission and develop programs that will help it reach its goal of fostering dialogue about Latin American cultural practices in the United States.

The board of the performing arts center planned for ground zero has scuttled the design for the building by Frank Gehry, the project’s original architect, and will instead select a design from a field of three finalists.

“We’re in the process of selecting a new architect,” said John E. Zuccotti, the real estate developer who is the chairman of the arts center’s board. “Three architectural firms are being considered.”

Officials at the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center said they were not ready to name the finalists but confirmed that the list did not include Mr. Gehry.

The demolition of an existing building, that will pave the way for construction of a new complex for Center for Maine Contemporary Art, is scheduled to begin next week.

Rockland Main Street Inc. sent out a notice last week that advised downtown businesses that during the weeklong demolition, Winter Street, which runs off Main Street, will be one-way. Demolition is expected to begin Sept. 8.

Excavation for the new foundation for the arts center on Winter Street is tentatively scheduled for October.

With the stroke of Gov. Deval Patrick’s pen a few weeks ago, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art got the go-ahead to realize the nearly 30-year-old dream of transforming a 19^th century, 26-building, 16-acre factory complex into a destination arts center that would also help revive the economy of North Adams, Mass.

As the art world knows, the road has been a bit bumpy and, along the way, the vision has changed. But Mass MoCA has hit something of a groove of late, giving state officials the confidence to allocate $25.4 million from state coffers for the expansion. Now, under director Joe Thompson — who’s been there for 29 years, from the beginning — it will reclaim almost all of the 600,000 square feet campus. Massachusetts taxpayers’ money will pay for the necessary infrastructure improvements, for fitting out the parts of the factory complex that are not currently in use, to make them ready for more art.