The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH will see a $100 million renovation and expansion, the organization announced on Friday. The establishment—opened on the shores of Lake Erie in 1995—will see its size grow by a third in this addition to the original I.M. Pei structure.
Led by architecture firm Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), the project will add 50,000 square feet of programming space as well as a new bandshell overlooking the lake. The addition, which PAU shared a design model of, is meant to resemble a guitar pick and will overlap part of the original structure.
Vishaan Chakrabarti, PAU’s founder and creative director, will lead the project and told the New York Times that “Our theme for the project is the Clash.” While neither Chakrabarti nor the Rock Hall has revealed specific floor plans for the added renovations, the architect has said that the new design has “A sense of grit” meant to mesh with the overall spirit of the museum and organization.
Rock Hall president and CEO Greg Harris told the Times that the initial idea for the project began five years ago. This will mark the first major renovations to the museum since it opened 25 years ago and will include added exposition space as well as lakefront office spaces.
“We wanted to host exhibitions like the Brooklyn Museum’s David Bowie show, but we just didn’t have the space,” Harris told the Times. “We want to give our audiences the giant wow moment that you would expect from a place of our magnitude.”
Due to the pandemic, the Rock Hall has so far lost $14 million this year and was forced to reduce its entire staff to just 50 employees. Nevertheless, the museum embarked on a $55 million capital campaign for renovations, which later ballooned to $100 million when the idea for the expansions was added. With the help of its trustees, the Rock Hall has raised $73 million of the total needed.
[H/T The New York Times]