Faena Forum, Miami’s forthcoming multidisciplinary cultural center, isn’t slated to open until next fall, but during Miami Art Week, design insiders were privileged with a sneak peek. Here we join the architects of OMA, the Rem Koolhaas–led firm behind the building, on a hard hat tour of its concrete shell.

“How could we make this new structure a center of activity for Miami Beach?” Shohei Shigematsu, the OMA partner in charge [of the project, recalls asking himself during his first meeting with the forum’s owners. Argentine entrepreneur Alan Faena and Ximena Caminos, partner and creative director of Faena, had envisioned constructing a “polyphonic space” that would transcend artistic disciplines, functioning both as a museum and a performance venue.

A rendering of Faena Forum’s two buildings.

The firm turned its focus toward flexibility, with the idea of creating spaces that could host a range of programming, from exhibitions to concerts to dance performances. The solution? Two geometric structures: a cubelike building attached to a cylindrical one, which can offer one continuous event space or multiple separate ones.

To the west, the cube features a boxlike theater space, as well as a large window overlooking Indian Creek. On the east side, the cylindrical form, capped by a dome with an oculus opening to the sky, houses an amphitheater beneath a lobby [luxuriously] lined in luxurious pink marble (Miami, after all, “is known for its glamorous entrances,” says Shigematsu). A spiraling walkway on the perimeter leads visitors upward to the dome, offering multiple views of the outside [world] through a variety of oddly shaped windows.

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The experience brings to mind the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim, a similarity Shigematsu says the firm noticed after the design process was completed. He notes another: “The Guggenheim was also built within a residential district, which generated this magical scale.” Though with Faena Forum, similarly low-slung amid a string of Miami’s high-rises, the effect “looks more like a jewel than a big architectural manifesto.”