Art Academy Plans Major Expansion in Over-the-Rhine

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EXCLUSIVE: Art Academy plans major expansion in Overthe-Rhine Jan 18, 2019, 9:58am EST Elevar Design The Art Academy of Cincinnati is planning a $5 million expansion called Future House at the former BarrelHouse Brewery space on 12th Street in Over-the-Rhine.

The 150-year-old Art Academy of Cincinnati is planning a major expansion meant to raise its visibility, house new high-tech programs in film and animation, and serve as a working and teaching space for Cincinnati’s design and marketing community.

The expansion will be called Future House and will make use of the former BarrelHouse Brewery space on 12th Street in Over-the-Rhine. That space has gone unused for years but is part of the Art Academy's main facility at 12th and Jackson streets in the heart of the neighborhood.

The project has a price tag of $5 million, including the costs of new programming, and the Academy plans to begin a public fundraising campaign later this year, said Tyler Hildebrand, the Academy’s director of admissions and development.

The plans are taking shape as the Academy begins a year-long series of events to mark the 150th anniversary of its founding. The project will be carried out in phases with major groundbreaking planned in spring 2020.

“We’re celebrating our past, but we’re thinking about the next 150 years of what art, design and creative fields are going to be,” Hildebrand said.

That vision includes more emphasis on video, sound, animation and the technology needed to produce high-quality work in those genres. Academy officials have been talking to the principals of Brave Berlin, co-creators of the Lumenocity and Blink festivals, about locating a 1/2

work space in the Future House expansion and creating a laboratory for the next Blink art and light festival, which is planned for October.

“We want to turn it in to a community-based, innovative, technology design center,” Hildebrand said.

The project will raise the visibility of the Art Academy, which has been a part of Cincinnati since 1869, but whose work and impact remains under the radar for many.

“There are still times when people walk down the street and don’t know who we are,” Hildebrand said. “This is going to allow people to come in and see what we do and interact, be a part of this creative center and utilize it in their own way.”

Renderings show a ground-level look with big windows and a well-lit, airy interior. The name “Future House” is displayed in large, lighted lettering on the 12th Street facade. A restaurant will face 12th, a major east-west street in OTR, and a community entrance will invite the public to enter and check out interactive and technology installations.

Fourteen years ago, the Art Academy moved from the hilltop environs of Mount Adams and the Cincinnati Art Museum to Over-the-Rhine, which at the time was far from the destination it is today.

“The move was sort of visionary, but it was sort of a gamble,” Hildebrand said.

The building that the Academy moved into at 12th and Jackson streets was the home of BarrelHouse Brewing Co., one of the first brewpubs in Cincinnati. BarrelHouse moved out in 2005 when the Art Academy moved in, but the BarrelHouse space fronting 12th Street, about 8,000 square feet, has since been used mainly for storage.

In addition to a café, plans call for that space to be a front door for the community with regular lectures, exhibits and workshops on creative technologies.

The remainder of the first-floor space, about 12,000 square feet, will house a gallery, a student commons, glassed-in studio space, a video suite, a screening space with tiered seating and a learning lab.

Topping off the project will be a rooftop redesign six stories up. Early designs call for a bar, a small stage and covered and uncovered seating.

Turner Construction and Elevar Design Group have been working on the project.

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