Cleveland’s new eight-acre Uptown development, which will include a new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) building from Farshid Moussavi’s Foreign Office Architects and apartments from Stanley Saitowitz, will now feature public spaces designed by James Corner Field Operations. Corner’s firm will design a new plaza for the addition to the museum, an alley, and nearby streetscapes. According to The Plain Dealer, Uptown will include projects totalling $150 million.
The MOCA project will occupy the “strategically important corner” at the western end of a triangle formed by a few key avenues. The museum hopes to turn this corner into a vibrant public space. MOCA explains its ideas: “The building is designed to showcase a program of internationally emerging art in flexible gallery spaces. The lobby is designed as an urban living room, a place for visitors to mingle, eat, shop, attend events, over the course of hours, or for brief interludes in a busy day. There will be no admission charge to the first floor space.”
Corner is being asked to design the plaza for the new MOCA building site, an alley south of the new apartments, and new parking and public spaces for the apartments. According to The Plain Dealer, the landscape project will include both “temporary and long-term uses for spaces throughout Uptown.”
ParkWorks, a local non-profit focused on urban revitalization, issued the contract with James Corner Field Operations. ParkWorks has been representing MOCA, MRN (a real estate developer), and Case Western Reserve University, the main sponsors of Uptown, and coordinating with other key stakeholders. The organization has catalyzed urban redevelopment in other sections of Cleveland and recently commissioned Field Operations to come up with concepts for a downtown plaza redesign (see earlier post).
Read the article and learn more about the new MOCA building designs.
Image credit: Foreign Office Architecture / MOCA
