Overview
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, also known as MOCA, is located in Metropolitan Cleveland, Ohio, USA. It is an architectural stunner (Holiday Inn Cleveland Clinic 2025) famous for its geometric forms and reflective stainless steel envelop. This week let us continue our exploration into the world of stainless steel through the case of MOCA.
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (or MOCA) is a 34000-square-feet, four-story, six-facet building. It is strategically positioned in University Circle, bordering Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art. The museum is also the Cleveland’s only contemporary art museum, making it a pivot point of cultural interest in the city.
MOCA is a non-collecting contemporary art museum, introducing new exhibitions and programs incessantly, which can provide visitors constantly fresh experience. Meanwhile, it enables designers to realize space flexibility and versatility without requirement for accommodating collection galleries.
Being the home for the works of more than 3,000 national and international artists, often through their first solo shows (Yelp, 2025), MOCA also focuses on public programs and events. This can be illustrated through the interior design which includes a multi-purpose room that can host a 220-people lecture or a cocktail party for up to 500 people, lobby, café and museum shop. Since 19 March 2019, daily admission to MOCA is free for fostering visitor accessibility and engagement (WhichMuseum 2025).
MOCA Project Background
MOCA is a major urban-revitalization project undertaken by Case Western Reserve University; developer MRN, Ltd.; and other institutions in the University Circle neighborhood. It is designed to promote creativity and growth in a cosmopolitan Cleveland neighbourhood, one of the country’s largest concentrations of cultural, educational and medical institutions.
Over the years, the Museum has undergone a tough journey, renting four homes across the city from the tiny Euclid Avenue storefront to a former frat house on Bellflower Road, then on to the Galleria Mall in Downtown Cleveland, and lastly to the 23,000 square feet of space on the second floor of the Cleveland Play House complex (The Incorvaia Team 2025). In 2010, the Play House was bought by the Cleveland Clinic with a plan to turn it into a medical education center.
MOCA is 9,000 square feet bigger than its previous Midtown location, with its gallery space remaining the same at around 10,000 square feet. The additional space was allocated to other functions like multipurpose room and administration offices.
Design of MOCA
MOCA is designed by the Iranian-born, London-based architect Farshid Moussavi collaborated with the Cleveland-based architects Westlake Reed Leskosky. The Museum first unveiled its designs for the building in 2010 and was open to public in October 2012. The project is worth $27.2 million (The Incorvaia Team 2025), with $5 million in federal New Markets tax credits financed for construction (Steven Litt 2012).
MOCA is designed into a four-story building which can create a compact envelope and optimal environmental performance, and above all free space for a museum plaza. The twisting architectural shape rises 60 feet from a compact hexagonal base to a rectangular roof, with imperceptible changes in the shape of each story.
Inspired by the triangular site at the intersection of two main avenues, Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road, Moussavi responded with a geometry of triangles and trapezoids sloping at various angles, all coming together to create a powerful abstracted form.
Stainless Steel Applied in MOCA
As impressive as its bold architectural form is the decision to let stainless steel sheets play the key role. Apart from the triangular facade at the main entrance facing northeast along Euclid Avenue, which is built with a giant slice of glass, other facades are constructed with stainless steel panels.
These stainless steel panels are assembled along diagonal grids to follow the diagonal load bearing structure of the external envelope. The panels are processed from stainless steel sheets in mirror black finish so that they can reflect weather changes and movement around the museum. In this way, the stainless steel façade provides ever-changing perceptions for the people that come by the Museum.
Stainless Steel at CIVMATS
At CIVMATS, we can also process stainless steel sheets in different colors like champagne gold, black mirror, NO.4, mirror 8K per your specific demands. Dimensions and grades are customizable.
Apart from stainless steel flat products, CIVMATS also excel in stainless steel long products, like stainless steel tubes, bars, wires. Welcome for your stainless steel enquiry and purchasing.
