Barcelona, Spain

Following an international competition, the leading resource for Miami-based visual artists Oolite Arts selected the Barcelona-based firm of Barozzi Veiga to create a new home for the organization in the City of Miami.

Oolite Arts and its old headquarters on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road Mall once helped revive a once-forgotten strip of land into a thriving commercial and cultural corridor. The nonprofit’s upcoming new space will be located at 75 NW 72nd St. runs along the Florida East Coast Railway and is slated to open in 2022.

The new campus will be accessible to different kinds of artists and will provide several spaces for arts, such as an exhibition area and a theater for lectures. The purpose of this renovation is to make the center beneficial both to artists and to the whole community.

At 35,000-square-feet, the campus is expected to also bolster the largely industrial area and its surrounding community, a neighborhood that’s been growing with incoming art galleries and arts related organizations looking for cheaper rent.

“Miami’s visual arts community has grown exponentially over the past decade, and Oolite Arts has transformed its programming to help Miami-based artists grow,” said Dennis School, president and CEO of Oolite Arts.

“Our new home will enable us to better meet the needs of both visual artists and the community.”

Miami-based firm Charles Benson will serve as the architect of record on the arts center, and visuals will be released later this year.

Barozzi Veiga’s selection comes just months after the Barcelona-based studio was announced as the new campus master plan architects for the Art Institute of Chicago, an institution also located over a rail line.

The firm’s most recently-completed structure, a museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, additionally dealt with train tracks.

Barozzi Veiga has been selected to design a major makeover of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Together with the Art Institute, Barozzi Veiga will address the new museum as an interlocking complex–an unfolding series of immersive spaces to welcome the visitors.

The project will transform the museum, by providing greater access to exhibitions, collections, and programs, with new and expanded art historical and social narratives.

Barozzi Veiga was founded in Barcelona by Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga in 2004.

The practice has since worked internationally in public and private projects and its work has received several prestigious distinctions. Its body of work includes cultural, educational and residential buildings as well as civic projects.