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Weiss/Manfredi tapped to master plan Naples, Florida’s cultural campus

Campus Culture

Weiss/Manfredi tapped to master plan Naples, Florida’s cultural campus

This article appears in The Architect’s Newspaper’s April 2017 issue, which takes a deep dive into Florida to coincide with the upcoming AIA Conference on Architecture in Orlando (April 27 to 29). We’re publishing the issue online as the Conference approaches—click here to see the latest articles to be uploaded.

Naples, Florida-based arts organization Artis—Naples hired New York-based Weiss/Manfredi to create a master plan for its 99,000-square-foot Kimberly K. Querrey and Louis A. Simpson Cultural Campus. The plan will help the campus—home to the Naples Philharmonic, The Baker Museum (formerly the Naples Museum of Art), and a handful of other arts facilities—become more cohesive and dynamic, as well as embrace its natural surroundings.

“What we’re really focusing on are the spaces between the buildings,” said Weiss/Manfredi’s Michael Manfredi, who points out that much of the campus, even though it is located less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico, is covered in surface parking and self-contained structures. “The light, the water… to take that atmosphere and pull it into Artis—Naples is an extraordinary opportunity,” added fellow principal Marion Weiss. “They have an opportunity to have both a cultural and public dimension.”

The master plan, set to guide development on the campus for the next two to three decades, is scheduled to be ready by summer, with work getting underway next year. The designers are set to meet with Artis—Naples officials and the local community in the coming weeks.

“We’re still at the early part of this exploration. But we know that when disciplines intersect something special happens,” said Artis—Naples CEO and President Kathleen van Bergen, hinting at closer connections among the institution’s varied cultural offerings. She added: “We want them to look at the entire property and consider everything. You don’t often get an opportunity like this in an organization’s life cycle.”

Currently that property, which hosts about 300,000 visitors per year, consists of five buildings, including two performance halls (Frances Pew Hayes Hall and Myra J. Daniels Pavilion), The Baker Museum, the Toni Stabile Education Building, and the Kohan Administration Building.

Best known for its Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, Weiss/Manfredi has also master planned the Nelson-Atkins Museum Cultural Arts District, and designed the Kent State Center for Architecture and Environmental Design. On this project, the firm beat out Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Hargreaves Associates, NADAAA with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, and PWP Landscape Architecture with Allied Works Architecture.

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