Francis Kéré Designing the new Las Vegas Museum of Art

The forthcoming Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) and Francis Kéré architect are taking the first steps in their relationship. The city is currently the largest in the United States without a major art museum, and they want to resolve it with the help of two art-world heavyweights: Elaine Wynn, the Las Vegas casino magnate and art collector, and Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Days ago, the Las Vegas City Council agreed to give 6,000 sqm (1.5 acres) of land in the city’s downtown cultural district to the museum for $1, a lot currently used for surface parking in Symphony Park near downtown Las Vegas. The museum, an 8.361,27-square-meter structure with a cost of $150 million, hopes to open in 2028.

Francis Kéré. Photograph by Tino Pohlmann / Heynstudios Berlin.

Francis Kéré, a native of Burkina Faso, now also German, and living in Berlin, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2022 has been tapped to design the building, his first major building in the United States, with two floors of exhibition space elevated above a plaza and an adjacent sculpture park.

Kéré Architecture will aim to synthesise markings of Las Vegas and the surrounding desert, paying attention to historic sites like the Paul Revere Williams' nearby 1963 Guardian Angel Cathedral, a Modernist church designed by the first Black architect licensed to work in the western United States.

"I want to learn from the local materials and then create something that is grounding, far from the neon, celebratory atmosphere. An island of calm where you can retreat.”

Francis Kéré

The museum will be built in Symphony Park, the new arts district taking shape not far from Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas. It will be across the street from the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, home to the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Nevada Ballet Theater, and near the Discovery Children’s Museum.

Preliminary concept design for the future Las Vegas Museum of Art. Rendering by Kéré Architecture.

Tim Bavington, Pipe Dream (2012) Symphony Park, Smith Center for the Performing Arts. Image courtesy of the artist.

Plans for St. Viator's Guardian Angel Shrine by Paul R. Williams' firm. Courtesy of the Guardian Angel Cathedral, Diocese of Las Vegas.

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More information

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Architects

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Kéré Architecture.

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Dates

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First ideas.- 2023
Construction.- 02.2027 - 2028.

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Area

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8,361.27 m². (90,000sq foot).

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Venue / Location

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Smith Avenue in Symphony Park. Las Vegas, USA.

Diébédo Francis Kéré

Diébédo Francis Kéré (b.1965, in Gando, Burkina Faso, west Africa) trained at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany, started his Berlin based practice, Kéré Architecture, in 2005. Kéré Architecture has been recognised nationally and internationally with awards, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2004) for his first building, a primary school in Gando, Burkina Faso; LOCUS Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009); Global Holcim Award Gold (2011 and 2012); Green Planet Architects Award (2013); Schelling Architecture Foundation Award (2014); and the Kenneth Hudson Award –European Museum of the Year (2015).

Projects undertaken by Francis Kéré span countries, including Burkina Faso,Mali, China, Mozambique, Kenya, Togo, Sudan, Germany and Switzerland. He has taught internationally, including the Technical University of Berlin, and he has held professorships at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Accademia di Architettura di Mendriso in Switzerland.

Kéré’s work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions: Radically Simple at the Architecture Museum, Munich (2016) and The Architecture of Francis Kéré: Building for Community, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2016). His work has also been selected for group exhibitions: Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010) and Sensing Spaces, Royal Academy, London (2014).

Among his main works are the Primary School (2001) and the Library (under construction) of Gando, Burkina Faso; the Health and Social Promotion Center (2014) and the Opera Village (under construction), both in Laongo, Burkina Faso; the Satellite of the Volksbühne Theater at the Tempelhof Airport, in Berlin (temporary installation, 2016); or the Pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery of the year 2017.