The Brownsville Digital Arts Centre is an artistic hub dedicated to the digital medium located in the historic black neighborhood of Brownsville in Miami, FL. The 17,992 sq. ft facility contains a series of community gathering spaces and multi-use educational rooms along with a soaring volume housing the library and study lounge. To the east of Brownsville, Wynwood and its surrounding areas are currently the artistic hubs of the city. Part of the goal of BDAC is to extend that artistic hub west to the underfunded community of Brownsville. Digital art is becoming increasingly common in the art world in Miami and beyond, with digital art spaces such as the Artech House and Superblue opening in the past few years in Miami. Knowledge of advanced visual computation is generally gate kept by institutions of higher education. BDAC aims to democratize that knowledge and become the library of the future, a repository of knowledge about the art of visual computation while also creating a space for community gathering.

The facility is based around three main volumes with three different levels. The main volume houses the “experiment” and main interior assembly functions of the building and supports a second volume created for the purpose of “explore,” thus creating a connection between exploration of your precedents and experimentation with future methods of art and visual computation. The third volume functions as the “motor” of the building, housing all the utilitarian functions and vertical circulation of the building and thus creating a transitory space between the floors.

Brownsville was once a artistic and cultural powerhouse in Miami, but with time it has been forgotten and left to decay. Its location on the relative “high ground” of Miami places it in danger of being taken over and losing its original history as the wave of climate gentrification moves ever further northwest. BDAC aims to restore much of that black artistic power in a way that solidifies Brownsville’s position in both history and in future stories. 

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