The Wolfe Center for the Arts is intended to foster creativity and encourage collaboration in theater, music, film, digital arts and dance. The Center will be the first completed American project for the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta.

The new structure is located on the campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. The project will be the firm’s first to be completed in the United States. Construction on the center will be completed in 2011.

The building design was led by Snohetta architect Craig Dykers and will feature 93,000 square-feet of space. Project was recently launched with a unique groundbreaking celebration that featured a 60-piece wind symphony and a architectural model created by the school’s ceramic students. The building is designed to unite a diverse range of art studies into a social facility that encourages interaction between the students and faculty. The architects also wanted to make it a space for the whole school, breaking barriers between people’s different interests.

The BGSU press release about the groundbreaking says that ‘merging research about the link between economic revitalization and a climate of creativity shows that our communities need a creative and educated population that is technically savvy.’

From the architects:

‘The Wolfe Center has at its very core a unique program that unites a diverse range of art studies into a socially enterprising facility meant to encourage lively interaction among students and faculty alike. it will ultimately be a place not only for students of the arts but for all students to approach knowing that they will find a place of quiet distinction and boundless energy.

High value is placed on the creation of open and democratic places within the design breaking down the barrier that might otherwise exist between people of different interests. In the Wolfe Center we have created a grand open hall that greets the visitor from the main entrance. Sunlit and spacious, the lobby provides views upward to the lounges, classrooms and studios at the art, music and drama departments on the second level of the Center.’

Further information and more pictures: www.snohetta.com.

Ohio is also home to buildings by, among others, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Peter Eisenman, Robert Stern, Michael Graves, Sejima & Nishizawa, I.M. Pei, Cesar Pelli and Arata Isozaki, not to mention Rafael Vinoly’s expansion of the Cleveland Museum of Art, now under way.