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.
