Unveiled the design by OMA for the Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art on Monday at the Marina Abramović Breakfast, hosted at MoMA PS1.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic plans to build a $15 million center in upstate New York devoted to the research and production of duration-based works of art lasting from six hours to several days.

Last week, Abramovic said the architectural firm OMA will transform a former tennis center in Hudson, N.Y. - about two hours north of New York City - into a 23,000-square-foot facility featuring ramps and specially designed lighting and furniture, including chairs equipped with wheels for visitors who fall asleep during the lengthy performances.

Marina Abramovic and Shohei Shigematsu.

The mission of the MAI is to cultivate new kinds of performance while functioning as a living archive, preserving and hosting performances of historic pieces. Abramovic plans to use the space as a laboratory for exploring time-based and immaterial art - including performance, dance, theater, film, video, opera, and music - through collaboration with practitioners in the realms of science, technology, and education. Working with the local Hudson community as well as schools and institutions from around the world, the MAI will host workshops, public lectures and festivals. As well as training artists, Abramovic also wants to train audiences in the mental and physical disciplines of creating and experiencing long-durational work.

Abramovic commented: "MAI's aim is to protect and preserve the intellectual and spiritual legacy of performance art from the 1970's into the future, and will serve as an homage to time-based and immaterial art."

Led by partners Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with associate Jason Long, the project will be designed locally out of OMA's New York office. Shigematsu commented: "We are excited to design a new performance typology, unique in its integration of specific parameters for long duration works."

The institute will be housed in a former theatre, which later became an indoor tennis court, then an antiques warehouse and market before falling into disrepair. Abramovic bought the theatre in 2007. OMA's design will enhance the existing structure to accommodate both the research and production of performance art. As a venue specifically created for long duration performances, OMA will also develop new types of furniture, lighting and other elements to facilitate the viewing of such works.

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Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.

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Shohei Shigematsu born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan in 1973. In 1996 graduated from the Department of Architecture at Kyushu University. Studying at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam. He became an associate since 2004.joined OMA in 1998 and became a partner in 2008.

He has led the office in New York since 2006. Sho's designs for cultural venues include the Quebec National Beaux Arts Museum and the Faena Arts Center in Miami Beach, as well as direct collaborations with artists, including Cai Guo Qiang, Marina Abramovic and Kanye West.

Sho is currently designing a number of luxury, high rise towers in San Francisco, New York, and Miami, as well as a mixed-use complex in Santa Monica. His engagement with urban conditions around the world include a new civic center in Bogota, Colombia; a post-Hurricane Sandy, urban water strategy for New Jersey; and a food hub in Louisville, Kentucky.

He is a design critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he is conducting a research studio entitled Alimentary Design, investigating the intersection of food, architecture and urbanism.
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Jason Long (OMA partner / OMA NY co-director) Jason Long is a Partner at OMA. He joined the firm in 2003 and has been leading OMA New York since 2014. Jason brings a research-driven, interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of projects internationally—from concept to completion, he served as the project manager for the Quebec National Museum in Quebec City and the Faena Forum in Miami.

A number of projects under his direction take a creative approach on the much-needed adaptive reuse and restoration of existing buildings, including POST Houston, the transformation of a former post office warehouse in downtown Houston into a mixed-use cultural platform, incorporating a new venue for Live Nation; the conversion of an Art Deco parking garage in New York City into a synagogue; the renovation of the Fitzgerald Building at University of Toronto into a new campus administration center; the adaptive reuse of Jersey City’s Pathside Building into museum for Centre Pompidou; and LANTERN, the conversion of a former commercial bakery into a community arts hub in Detroit.

Jason’s projects in urbanism and the public realm, particularly in Washington, D.C., public health, and equitable development at varying scales: a streetscape design for D.C. Convention Center, the 11th Street Bridge Park connecting disparate communities on either side of the Anacostia River, and a sports and recreation masterplan for the RFK Stadium Armory Campus.

His diverse portfolio extends to residential developments across housing types and regions in North America. Jason led the recently completed Eagle + West, OMA’s first high-rise towers in New York. In California, he oversaw the design and completion of The Avery in San Francisco and is currently leading 730 Stanyan, a 120-unit, 100% affordable housing building in historic Haight Ashbury. Currently in progress is The Perigon, a beachfront high-rise in Miami’s mid-beach neighborhood.

Jason previously served as a key member of AMO and was the Associate Editor of Content (Taschen, 2004).

Jason has lectured at SPUR, Urban Land Institute (ULI), AIA Conventions, and various museums and universities across the globe. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University School of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP).

Jason holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Vassar College and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD).
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Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

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Published on: May 8, 2012
Cite: "OMA and new Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (MAI)" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/oma-and-new-marina-abramovic-institute-preservation-performance-art-mai> ISSN 1139-6415
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