“The Kurt and Marilyn Wallach Center will incorporate and further empower existing FAU multidisciplined educational programs scattered through the campus, all dedicated to providing meaningful and pragmatic approaches to serve peace, justice, and human rights in a world threatened by the rise of nationalism, authoritarianism, and violent hate.
The team has interpreted the spirit and intention of this grand scheme with an architectural plan that offers flexible contiguous and segmented space to facilitate student education, professional seminars, enlightening and provocative exhibitions, leadership development from elementary school through graduate studies, and the experiences, culture, and history of the Holocaust and Jewish studies curriculum.
Anticipating the evolution of artificial intelligence and communication technology, the two-story, 21,000 SF building is designed for the future: It encompasses a recording studio enabling students, historians, and academics – changemakers all – to learn and practice the skills of documenting and interviewing, recording, and producing narratives of social justice, compassion, and understanding focused on motivating public opinion. The 150-seat ADA-compliant hall that allows for lectures, musical and small ensemble performances, cinema, even religious services. The engaging two-story lobby, facing east in Jewish house of worship tradition, serves as a pre-event venue, welcoming campus denizens as well as guests; offers a student study haven and gathering place; and pays homage to an impressive donor digital wall, sure to be filled with impassioned supporters’ names and serve as multifunctional digital experience sharing events, student created videos, movies, etal.
Elsewhere on the first floor are two classrooms, 1,275 SF exhibition space for rotating exhibits and the Craig and Barbara Weiner Holocaust Museum of South Florida, an interactive digital display that allows visitors to ask questions to a Holocaust survivor or liberator questions and receive valuable insight from them, a Green Room, restrooms, and adaptable multipurpose areas for collaborative and individual educational activities. The second floor features offices and accommodations for program administrators, scholars, and graduate students; a faculty lounge; and seminar room.”
