Here’s a sneak peek at the $30 million future ‘village’ of this Miami arts nonprofit

Today, a row of five warehouses stand at 75 NW 72nd St., alongside train tracks. In less than two years, a 26,850-square-foot enclave of artist studios, exhibition space and a community garden will take its place.

Architects call it a “village.” Oolite Arts calls it home.

Oolite Arts, a nonprofit organization that supports the arts and artists, revealed renderings of its new $30 million headquarters on Tuesday. The nonprofit, which is based on Lincoln Road, will move inland to Miami’s Little River neighborhood when the building opens to the public in early 2024. Construction on the project will begin this fall.

The one-story, concrete structure is an open-air concept dotted with palm trees and plants indigenous to South Florida with several entryways for visitors to explore the area for free. Besides its sprawling size, the building’s most striking feature is a series of towers that aren’t really towers at all. They’re skylights, wind catchers and even water tanks.

The design, which is meant to attain LEED certification, heavily focuses on sustainability and community access. It includes a theater for lectures and films, two rooms dedicated to art classes, a print studio, a rooftop for events, and a gallery triple the size of the Lincoln Road location’s exhibition space. Oolite’s new building will have 21 free artist studios. (The Lincoln Road building only has 14.)

Dennis Scholl, Oolite Arts president and CEO, said that the nonprofit’s board stressed the importance of having a “signature building” that is not just an office space, but a work of public art for the community to benefit from as well.

“We could’ve renovated a warehouse,” Scholl said. “But instead, they chose to really go for it. They really went for it.”

Previously known as ArtCenter/South Florida, Oolite Arts was founded by Ellie Schneiderman in 1984 to “help artists help themselves” by offering free studio space, grants, exhibitions and professional connections.

The new headquarters’ central location and its ambitious design will allow Oolite to do more for both artists and the greater Miami community, Scholl explained. Oolite will soon join the likes of several art galleries and studios, like Fountainhead Studios and Laundromat Art Space, that have found a home in the Little River and Little Haiti areas.

“As things change, the artists are the pioneers,” Scholl said. “They go into a neighborhood, folks notice that and follow them.”

In 2014, Oolite sold one of its two Lincoln Road buildings for $88 million, which funded the $30 million project. Oolite announced its move to Little River in 2019 and anticipated a grand opening by now. Of course, the pandemic delayed those plans, but the organization persevered at a slower pace.

After whittling a list of 100 architectural firms, Scholl said, Oolite hired Barozzi Veiga, an award-winning Spanish firm led by architects Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga. Though the firm was commissioned to design the master plan for a revamped Art Institute of Chicago, the Oolite headquarters will be its first built project in the United States.

The building’s design is deceptively simplistic. The architects aimed to develop a structure that was open enough to encourage community participation yet private enough to allow artists to work in peace. It was a challenge they were happy to accept, Veiga told the Miami Herald.

“We were playing with this idea of a village around a common space because it fits perfectly with the program that Oolite has,” he said.

The rectangular structure has an open courtyard in its center that leads visitors in and out of rooms and windows peeking into studios. Each studio is designed to be bathed in natural light, thanks to the skylights in some towers.

Other towers were designed with sustainability in mind. Some collect rainwater from the rooftop to reuse for the building’s gray-water system. Others have special vents that capture wind to help cool the structure on a humid day. The design also includes six “solar chimneys” that use solar power to regulate the building’s temperature while consuming less energy, Veiga said.

“Every tower has a meaning; it’s not just a gesture,” he said.

For Oolite’s artists and alumni, the future headquarters represent more than a place to work and create.

Germane Barnes, an architect and Oolite alum originally from Chicago, said that Oolite helped him cement his legitimacy as an emerging designer in South Florida’s art scene. When Barnes saw the renderings, he said he appreciated how Veiga and Barozzi embraced Miami’s brutalist architectural history in the concrete design.

“One of the things that most architects say about Miami is that it’s very young with regards to its larger cultural spaces, so I envision this headquarters for Oolite being a contribution to the larger collection of institutional spaces in South Florida,” Barnes said. “I see in the same vein as a Perez art museum or an ICA.”

The new headquarters is bound to attract young talent to Miami, Barnes said. Edouard Duval-Carrié, a longtime Miami-based painter, agrees.

Duval-Carrié, a Haitian artist and Oolite alum, hadn’t seen the renderings yet and excitedly asked if they were “to die for.” He said the new headquarters location near Little Haiti is a testament to the opportunities Oolite provides for Miami’s young, Caribbean artists. Hopefully, he said, it’ll convince Miami’s homegrown talent to stay.

“They don’t have to go to New York or L.A.,” he said. “They can stay here and create a career for themselves with the help of spaces like Oolite.”

This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.