Jean Nouvel visited western Massachusetts “about a dozen years ago for Thanksgiving” and is now being considered to master plan the downtown of North Adams. He met last Friday with North Adams Mayor Richard J. Alcombright to discuss ideas and plans for the development of the Berkshire city and said he is “intrigued and impressed by the recent developments at the Clark and Mass M0CA.” Nouvel also released the following statement: “The concept of a cultural corridor in northwest Massachusetts is unique. The existing institutions are phenomenal. The combination of elements that exists here is like no other that I know of. The landscape, the topography, the colors, and the collision of Main Street, the overpass, and the railroad lends itself to an extraordinary and precise intervention or series of interventions that would preserve the scale of the city, and build on the concentration of cultural resources in the region.”

With former Guggenheim Foundation Director Thomas Krens planning a new museum complex in the town’s small airport, this is a region that thinks big!