FORT WORTH, Texas, Feb. 15, 2023 – Billed as an “oasis of calm,” a newly commissioned installation by the internationally known artist James Turrell is under construction on two acres in the Clearfork development in southwest Fort Worth. The piece will be housed within Keith House, a modern interpretation of a traditional meeting house designed by Fort Worth and Dallas architecture firm Bennett Partners. Keith House will serve as a venue for meetings, performances and other events and is slated for completion in mid-2023.
“Keith House will be a completely new experience in Fort Worth,” said Michael Bennett, Principal and CEO of Bennett Partners. “It will be a space that will help visitors consider the importance of light in our lives and how it can uplift, calm, inspire and unite us while also connecting us to faraway worlds that share their light for us to enjoy each evening. Bennett Partners is deeply honored to have a part in bringing this visionary project to Fort Worth.”
A 21st-century take on the traditional meeting house, Keith House is a place for public assembly and community building. The facility blends its role as a gathering space with a spiritually uplifting ambiance that emphasizes values such as peace, mutual respect and the power of silence, according to Adelaide Leavens, executive director of Entrada of Texas and the Meta Alice Keith Bratten Foundation, the nonprofits supporting the development’s construction and operation.
The facility’s art installation will be the newest creation within James Turrell’s “Skyspace” genre. Titled The Keith Skyspace, it will use light as a medium to evoke wonder and a sense of peace, Leavens said.
Turrell has created more than 80 Skyspace installations worldwide, including those at The University of Texas at Austin, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., Rice University in Houston, and in Argentina, Australia, Japan, Mexico and many other countries.
In Fort Worth, The Keith Skyspace installation is designed to extend the beauty and serenity of sunrise and sunset into the structure, as morning or evening light filters in around the ceiling’s perimeter and projects through a rooftop aperture. Turrell himself describes his structures as “just containers for the light; the art is in the experience of the viewer.“
With a diverse portfolio ranging from downtown Fort Worth’s Frost Tower to adaptive reuse projects such as Hotel Dryce and the historic Fort Worth Stockyards Horse and Mule Barns, Bennett Partners designs have won broad professional acclaim, including recognition from the Texas Society of Architects and the American Institute of Architects’ Fort Worth Chapter.
