The design of a new 900-seat theater and fine arts center in a small migrant community on the Texas/Mexico border.
This building evolved from significant public conversations with students, parents, teachers and community activists, working with historians, curators, folklorists, artists and architects to envision a community gathering place.
Brooks + Scarpa has released their proposal for the roughly 22,000 square foot addition to the existing 12,000 square foot 1929 historic Kimball Art Center located in the heart of downtown Park City at the corner of Main Street and Heber Ave.
The design concept for the new Kimball Art Center is to perceptually bring the mesmerizing and seemingly endless deep blue Park City sky directly into the space of the city. Despite the time of year or weather conditions, the sky always seems to quickly return to its infinite and hypnotic clarity, with rarely a cloud in the sky. It provokes a kind of indelible wonder; a dreamlike state of mind that engages the viewer, heightens their sense of awareness, and brings a sense of vitality to the place. The Kimball “Cloud” delivers a new experience and expands art into the broader Park City community, creating a new social space for the 21st century.
(In the begginnig, this project’s name was Arts Centre, but nowadays it’s called MUNCYT. In fact, it became the National Museum of Science and Technology.)
This Project is the first price of an international competition to build combination of two different briefs, a Dance School and a Museum. We proposed to develop them in a single volume. This allowed us to explore the relationship between two structures that were different in every aspect: organization, perception, expression, function and construction. Using both factors, we had the chance to add, sustract, divide, but we chose to multiply. The strange concrete form contains the school while the outer surface, the space between the form and the limit, contains the museum.
Our designs for a new performing arts centre were inspired the ancient city of Petra – its interplay with nature and the processes of erosion that have reshaped its contours. In this new building erosion becomes the sole means of articulating public spaces, while remaining masses contain the performance spaces.
Lightemotion Celebrates Ten Years Of International Success
One of North America’s pre-eminent lighting designers celebrates a decade of illuminating prestigious buildings, exhibits and events around the world.
2012 represents an important milestone for Lightemotion and its founder François Roupinian. It marks the first decade of the studio’s existence and signals ten years in which Roupinian’s brand of exciting lighting design has become known around the world. Lightemotion’s signature style has given it an international reputation through its work on major projects in Canada, Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East.
Images Courtesy Lightemotion
Ten Years of Globe Trotting
Founded in 2002, Lightemotion’s origins are in the field of the performing arts and multimedia. The company has since expanded into other fields of expertise, such as architectural and museum lighting.
Roupinian has surrounded himself with a multidisciplinary and multicultural team that can manage projects in five languages. The scope of the company’s work is broad, including lighting plans for exhibitions (Museum of Strasbourg, National Museum of Singapore and the country’s national Library), as well as cabarets (at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas) and casinos such as the Revel Casino in Atlantic City (designer, Scéno Plus), which is due to be completed in 2012.
Images Courtesy Lightemotion
“We began with the event centres at the Revel Casino Resort but were soon commissioned to illuminate the casino itself and numerous other public spaces (designer, Scéno Plus), too,” says Roupinian. “This is currently one of the largest new build projects on the East Coast and we are being asked to design lighting for truly immersive environments throughout.”
Recently Lightemotion put its architectural lighting signature on the new Ajax Experience museum *, in recognition of AFC Ajax football club (architecture, Sid Lee, designer, gsmprjct) in Amsterdam; the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile of Torino and the Wine Museum of Barolo in Italy; plus, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, marking its 80th anniversary. The Montreal studio also created the dramatic lighting design for the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai and the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archeology traveling exhibit.
Images Courtesy Lightemotion
From flair to facilitation
Roupinian began designing lighting in the performance arts around 25 years ago. His flair for illuminating performance environments soon evolved into other types of lighting designs, firstly within exhibits, then interiors and on to lighting entire buildings.
“At Lightemotion we have a passion for light and an artistic vision that speaks for itself in our designs,” says Roupinian. “We are a diverse group of professionals with multiple talents and when we illuminate a building our main objective is to transcend convention and bring it to life, articulating form and reinforcing the brand in a dynamic way.”
However, Roupinian believes that artistic flair is just one part of the success he has achieved to date. He cites the process and methodology used as big factors in completing projects to the client’s satisfaction. Clients want to be wowed but they also want to be sure that they are working with a professional team, believes Roupinian: Lightemotion has a 98% customer retention rate.
Images Courtesy Lightemotion
Returning to Canada
In Canada, recent projects at the Cinémathèque Québecoise, the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, the interior of the Place des Arts and the church of St-John the Evangelist brought recognition to Roupinian in his hometown of Montreal. And, with new commissions such as the Cosmodôme Space Science Center, The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton and Montreal’s Complexe Desjardins, which will be opening in 2012, Lightemotion will become even more widely known in Canada.
“I’m very proud that we are participating in rejuvenation the Complexe Desjardins,” says Roupinian. “It’s a city institution, a place that everyone knows, and, we are giving it a new lease of life by designing a custom light fixture that creates a new dynamically lit environment.” Using LEDs, Lightemotion drastically reduces the energy requirements of the centre, while also creating a color-change effect that brings to life the space and the experience of those within it.”
Images Courtesy Lightemotion
“With these projects, we are ecstatic to have the opportunity of showcasing our expertise here in Canada,” says Roupinian. “Place des Arts and Complexe Desjardins are at the centre of Montreal culture, while the Cosmodôme will be a national tourist attraction. We hope that these signature projects will be enjoyed by visitors for years to come.”
As Lightemotion moves into its second decade, Roupinian takes with him an evermore diverse portfolio. Canada’s one of the premier lighting designers anticipates new challenges and continuing to work both nationally and internationally on projects ranging from exterior and interior designs for museums, hotels, restaurants, religious buildings and public spaces to traveling exhibitions and theater performances.
“Every project presents its own set of challenges and we look forward to them all,” says Roupinian.
Located in Raleigh’s revitalizing Historic Depot District, an unlikely butterfly has emerged from its decades-long cocoon. The historic 1910 two-story brick structure built for Allen Forge & Welding Company and enlarged around 1927 for the Brogden Produce Company — and more recently home to longtime occupant Cal-Tone Paints — has emerged from its asbestos clad sheathing into a new incarnation as the home of Raleigh’s Contemporary Art Museum (CAM).
Tags: North Carolina, Raleigh Comments Off on Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina by Brooks + Scarpa Architects (designed with Rhino and AutoCAD)
Before the appearance and the diffusion of cinemas and of mass media the Hakawati was the main form of entertainment in Arabic-speaking countries and most notably in Lebanon. The Hakawati was a storyteller who thrilled his audience with a story. He was the spontaneous messenger moving throughout the city, a key-figure in stimulating social cohesion and in activating a public space for all.
In approaching the design for the new Kimball Art Center, we found great inspiration in the urban development of Park City, the Kimball site, and the city’s mining heritage. We feel the form of the new Kimball Art Center emerges where these rich stories overlap.
The project is based on the idea of maximal respect to the character of the park’s locality in the city centre for which it is designed. It is a complex of separate pavilions based on the floor plan of the existing build-up area of provisional assembled buildings, so-called likusáks. The concept of the project presupposes an interaction between education, culture and the public. Its realisation will significantly contribute to revitalise the neglected eastern part of the park on Kraví hora. The exclusively located area offers only a commercial use of the provisional built-up area, and even though it is situated in the wider city centre, it has not undergone a process of revitalisation yet. The joyless nature of the area with decrepit temporary objects contrasts dramatically with the surrounds of Kraví hora, being architectonically and socially highly attractive.
Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology
In the land marked industrial building dating from the last turn of century there are imprints of different eras. It can be compared to an archive layers of time. The building has served as ammunition factory, paint factory and presently as kunsthalle for contemporary art and architecture. The kunsthalle lies in an area with heavy, superannuated industrial buildings, more or less degenerated. This is a landscape that has been left, that is waiting to be demolished and integrated with the surrounding city. Until then, this place lives on its own terms.
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