The Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art
6th northwest corner Walnut Streets;
Zaha Hadid; 1997-2002

When completed, the new home of Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) will embody the institution's ongoing role as promoter of daring and farsighted artistic strategies. Founded in 1939 as the Modern Art Society, the CAC has frequently presented the most provocative and significant experimental art, unhampered by a permanent collection and supported by both an adventurous and a loyal band of futurists and risk-takers. Consistent with this probing of the outer limits of the current art scene, which has always included design and architecture in its mandate, the Center, under the leadership of Director Charles Desmarais, selected architect Zaha Hadid to design its new facility. She then chose to work with local architectural firm KZF, Inc.

The existing Contemporary Arts Center quarters (1968-70; Harry Weese & Assocs.; 115 E. 5th) are set among a group of early 20th-century high-rise office buildings (see 7) and linked at the street level with 4th and 5th Sts. They are admirably contextual but have been outgrown, so the opportunity was seized to integrate a new CAC building into the nearby Entertainment District around the Aronoff Center for the Arts (see 11).

An international competition held in 1997 led to the choice of Iraqi-born, London-based architect Hadid (born 1950). Although she is renowned and influential as both designer and educator, she has had few projects executed; the CAC is her first U.S. commission. The new Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art will also be the first major American museum designed by a woman. Hadid remains on the cutting edge of Deconstructivist architecture, both challenging and, in her own way, responding to context. Her brilliant draftsmanship and daring use of multiple computerized models have helped communicate her vision of an exciting, open-ended structure for the CAC. It will be linked with street-level life through an "urban carpet" that ascends into a series of galleries and support-spaces. These will be connected by an active, switchback vertical spine, combining ramps and stairs. Degrees of transparency, translucency, and opacity provide internal and external vistas to help overcome a restricted site and a demanding program that combines education and varied activities in keeping with the revitalized mission of the CAC. Hadid's soaring, ecstatic vision will at last be realized - in Cincinnati. Will be open on a regular basis; see the display at the present CAC.