Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has released early concept designs for The Center for Arts & Innovation project in Boca Raton, Florida. The firm was announced as the winner of an international RFP process to imagine the Center in September of last year. 

As stated in an announcement today, the new campus aims to foster the convergence of arts, education, business, and community in order to develop a new approach to how the world designs, imagines, programs, utilizes, and embraces cultural infrastructure.

The project will consist of a three-story building featuring permeable and luminous multi-use spaces. The eastern side of the scheme will include the “main venue,” a large multi-functional, convertible event, exhibition, and performance space designed to merge seamlessly with the outdoor piazza. The main venue is intended to be highly flexible, allowing for a variety of gatherings, exhibitions, performances, and innovative programming. 

The Center will also contain a public lobby, spacious flexible working areas, dedicated workshops, maker space, creator residences, and a startup incubator. There will also be educational and social spaces open to the public. The building’s third floor will feature Boca Raton’s first covered rooftop terrace with dining services. It will provide views overlooking the city’s downtown. 

The roof will also host 100,000 square feet of hybrid photovoltaic solar collectors that will produce both electricity and hot water. Above the roof, there will be a 100-person capacity panoramic space, called the Belvedere, which will provide 360-degree views of the surrounding environment. A parking garage will be positioned underground.

Outside, a central exterior space will be known as the Piazza. It will be used as an amphitheater for outdoor performances, in addition to special events, daily programming, public events, and temporary exhibitions in collaboration with the Boca Raton Museum of Art. 

“When you’re designing a conceptual plan as an architect, you’re often designing something that you don’t know, yet, exactly what it will be,” said Renzo Piano. “It’s about inventing. It’s about starting and working and seeing. We’re at the beginning and so what you see in these early designs — it’s not printed in stone. Rather, it’s the beginning of what we’re inventing and of something really unique.”

“For The Center to fulfill its goal of inspiring, growing, supporting, and shaping communities, artists, students, creatives and entrepreneurs, our physical space itself must be as innovative as those who will visit and use it, and this initial design by Renzo Piano begins to bring shape to that vision,” said Chair & CEO of The Center, Andrea Virgin. “We are confident that this state-of-the-art destination will serve as a catalyst for new pioneering approaches that will not just unlock a renaissance for Boca Raton’s next 100 years but also empower countless people to use creativity and innovation in their daily lives to shape a new future for generations to come.”