Barozzi Veiga to Design New Miami Campus for Oolite Arts Foundation

Miami’s visual arts community has grown exponentially over the past decade, and the Miami-based arts institution Oolite Arts, formerly ArtCenter/South Florida, announced that it had tapped the Barcelona-based architecture firm Barozzi Veiga to design its new facility, in 75 NW 72nd St. in Miami’s Little River neighborhood.

Oolite Arts wants to build 3,716-square-meter (40,000-square-foot), a new home with artists’ studios for its artist residency program, a top-tier exhibition space, a theater for lectures and film screenings, and classrooms for the 350-plus art classes offered each year to the community by professional artists.

Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga of Estudio Barozzi Veiga, 2017. Image courtesy of Estudio Barozzi Veiga

"No two designs of Barozzi Veiga's are alike,” said Dennis Scholl, president and chief executive of Oolite Arts. “They are always responsive to the areas where they are located. We loved that approach, and also their extensive experience in the cultural sector.” Scholl added that the new space will “enable us to better meet the needs of both visual artists and the community”.

Barozzi Veiga was recently chosen to overhaul the campus of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Spanish architecture firm is known for designing projects such as the Szczecin Philharmonic Hall in Poland and Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne in Switzerland, which opened last fall.

Plans for the building will be released later this year. The organization plans to open in 2022.

Oolite Arts, founded 36 years ago, helps Miami-based artists by providing them with free studio space, exhibition opportunities and financial assistance.

In 2014, the organization sold its Lincoln Road building, which it purchased for $684,000 in 1988. The sale brought in $88 million for Oolite. The funds will go toward the construction of its $30 million new facility. They also allowed Oolite to establish the Ellies, Miami’s Visual Arts Awards, which awarded a total of $500,000 to forty-five local artists last year, and to establish a new travel residency program, inaugurated earlier this month.

Site plan, overview, New Miami Campus for Oolite Arts Foundation. Image courtesy of Estudio Barozzi Veiga

Architects Alberto Veiga, left, and Fabrizio Barozzi stand at the Florida East Coast Railway tracks in front of the site in the Little River-Little Haiti neighborhood where they will design a new building for Oolite Arts. The nonprofit group announced it has hired the award-winning, Barcelona-based architects to design a complex housing artists’ studios, a theater, exhibition space and a “maker space.” Photograph by Christine Mendenhall, Oolite Arts

Site plan, overview, New Miami Campus for Oolite Arts Foundation.

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More information

Fabrizio Barozzi, Alberto Veiga. BAROZZI VEIGA

Fabrizio Barozzi born in Rovereto (Italy) in 1976. He currently lives and works in Barcelona.He graduated as an architect in 2003 by the University Institute of Architecture in Venezia. He completed his training in 1999 at the School of Architecture of Seville in 2001 while living in Paris.

He began his training partner in 2003 working as the office of William Vázquez Consuegra and later in 2004 is associated with Alberto Veiga and establish their own professional studio.

He has been Professor of Projects at International University of Catalonia in Barcelona from 2007 to 2009 and since 2009 is Associate Professor of Projects at the University of Girona.

Alberto Veiga (Santiago de Compostela, Spain), was born in 1973 and studied architecture at the School of Architecture of Navarre. After graduating, he worked as an assistant and planner in Patxi Mangado practices in 1997-2001. From 2001-03, he worked as a designer of Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, where he worked on a number of projects awarded. In 2004 he settled in EBV Architects with Fabrizio Barozzi. Projects currently teaches 3rd year at UIC.

EBV Architects is an architectural firm located in Barcelona and founded by Fabrizio Barozzi (Trento, Italy, 1976) and Alberto Veiga (Santiago, Spain, 1973) devoted to architecture, urbanism and interior design. The experience accumulated over the years in collaboration with renowned architects has allowed prestige EBV start a professional career where independent research plays a major role. The study EBV and has been awarded with many awards nationally and internationally.