Pritzker Prize Laureate Renzo Piano has just revealed designs for Boca Rotan’s new creative campus, The Center for Arts & Innovation in Florida. The Center seeks to transform Boca Raton into an internationally recognized destination for culture, arts, innovation, and technology. In fact, the three-story structure features functions that bridge creativity across the realms of arts, education, business, and community.
Still in its early and iterative stages, the Center aims to pioneer a new approach to how the world designs, imagines, programs, and embraces its cultural infrastructure. Catalyzing future leaders and visionaries, the scheme offers a dynamic platform for new ideas, AI integration, and end-to-end STEAMeducation. Seeking to cultivate knowledge and community engagement, The Center is dedicated to shaping tomorrow’s cultural landscape through equipping its future leaders and occupants with the resources they need today to build a better tomorrow.
The new campus will include a three-story building that fulfills a multitude of functional needs. The facility accommodates a variety of uses and offers adaptable and inclusive areas throughout. The main venue, located on the eastern façade, seeks to be a highly flexible space intended for events, exhibitions, and concerts. Additionally, it features a public lobby, a large flexible work space, dedicated workshops, maker space, creator residences, a startup incubator, and public educational and social spaces.
The third floor hosts the city’s first covered rooftop terrace, overlooking Plaza Real and the city’s downtown. It uses 9,200 sqm of hybrid photovoltaic solar collectors to harness Florida’s sun energy and generate electricity and hot water. Above the roof, the scheme includes a 100-person capacity space named “The Belvedere,” offering views of the city, the ocean, and surrounding areas.
Innovation is like beauty – you don’t just say someone is beautiful for their exterior, they’re also beautiful because of their mind. The same sentiment will apply to The Center. It’s not about being a beautiful building; the beauty is in what will be created and invented inside the building. –Renzo Piano
The central outdoor space is known as The Piazza, grounding the entire project. In partnership with the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the plaza will continue to be used as an amphitheater for outdoor performances, special events, daily programming, public events, and temporary exhibitions. The plaza is meant to be a lively, dynamic space accessible to the whole community, with the goal of promotingurban culture and community interaction.
Initially selected to work on this project in September, Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) aims to frame The Center apart from all other cultural venues across South Florida, catering to different community demands. In other similar news, RPBW recently completed the new building for Istanbul Modern, Türkiye’s first museum of modern and contemporary art. Additionally, the Waterfront di Levante, a project that aims to transform what was previously the back of a port into a new urban front on the sea, was introduced and developed by Renzo Piano and RPBW. Finally, RPBW, working in partnership with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Health Initiative, has recently revealed the plans for three new hospitals in Greece.