moCa Cleveland

moCa Cleveland, the city’s contemporary art museum, is a bold, ever-evolving fixture in the region’s cultural scene. As a non-collecting institution, it thrives on change, unveiling three new exhibitions each year to keep the experience fresh and unexpected. Designed by Farshid Moussavi Architecture, the building marks her first project in the U.S. and proves that ambition isn’t a matter of size. Rising from a hexagonal base to a rectangular crown, the four-story, 34,000 square foot structure plays with geometry in ways that are anything but ordinary. Its exterior, clad in mirror-finish black Rimex stainless steel, captures moody, precise reflections of the sky and city, turning the building itself into a piece of shifting public art.

Wallace Design Collective provided structural engineering services for the design of the exterior wall panel and screen system for the expansion. The unitized wall panels form both the inner and outer walls of the museum. Placing the two-story-tall panels took the building from a bare steel frame to an enclosed structure. The corrugated interior surface provides mounting points for artwork, and the outside surface is a black mirror-polished stainless steel rain screen with integrated glazing.

photography: ©A. Zahner Company