Muhammad Ali Center
How do you connect a museum to the city around it?
- Client
- Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville, Kentucky
- Brief
- Reimagine the outdoor campus of the Center
- Year
- 2025
- Role
- Creative DirectorCompleted at G&A
A proposal to reimagine the Muhammad Ali Center’s outdoor campus, developed at G&A in 2025. I led the creative direction, connecting Ali’s legacy to a sequence of public spaces and experiences that would bring the Center into closer relationship with downtown Louisville.
The foundation
“Muhammad’s greatest fans haven’t even been born yet.”
DeVone Holt, President and CEO, Muhammad Ali Center
“To honor Muhammad’s legacy, remember that he was always curious about other people. Be curious.”
Lonnie Ali
The brief
How would you transform the outdoor campus into a dynamic, community-centered experience?
What’s true
Curiosity. Courage. Compassion. Each one leads to connection.
The idea
Make the connection.
Muhammad showed us that connecting with others is the first step to living with compassion. His charity. His power to draw people in. His legacy of connecting people around the world with his spirit.
The challenge
The Center sits just across the line from where people want to walk.
It has to connect with downtown Louisville and West Main Street, but getting there along North 6th and 7th Streets is awkward. Across the way, Baird Urban Sports Park is full of potential. What if that park became part of the campus?
The vision
A natural connection: the park becomes the front yard.
The lower plaza stretches out into an urban balcony, a welcoming porch. The foot traffic of West Main flows through a garden and up the front steps. On that route, a sequence of destinations: an unforgettable moment for visitors, and a cherished amenity for locals.
Slip through the preserved facades on West Main.
An urban oasis of milkweed and butterflies, overlooked by a balcony.
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Step through the historic facades on West Main Street and find a pocket park: inclusive, accessible and planted with milkweed for butterflies. Shade structures fly across the landscape and guide you toward the Overlook. The foot traffic of West Main flows through the garden and up the Center’s front steps.
At dusk, the garden glows.
Butterfly canopies light the way up to the Center.
An urban balcony, to see and be seen.
The Center’s lower plaza stretches out over the garden toward the city.
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What kind of public space attracts people most? Elevated ones: balconies, porches, overlooks, raised plazas. The Overlook extends the Center’s lower plaza into a welcoming porch above the garden, looking out toward Louisville.
The butterfly, given form.
An iconic public space that evokes the feeling of kindness.
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There may be no more powerful symbol of Muhammad’s compassion than the butterfly. It has come to mean far more than a boxing style. In Butterfly Plaza, that symbol comes to life through structures that fly the butterfly motif, building on the abstract design of the existing fountain to make a space of kindness and compassion.
After dark, butterflies of light gather underfoot.
A gathering place by day, and a destination by night.
Their shadows fly across the ground with the sun.
Shade by day, light by night.
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The shadow cast by each structure moves gradually across the plaza with the sun, so the butterflies seem to fly through the day. At night, the same forms glow.
A citywide destination for families.
A place to play, get fit, meditate, take a selfie.
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At the heart of a community-centered campus is the connection with families. Butterfly Park and Playground turns the upper plaza into an all-ages space with families at its center. Imagine strolling West Main with your kids on a summer evening. The Center is your next stop.
Creative Concept: Shadow Sculpture & Play Structure
Once a day, the shadow becomes a perfect butterfly.
The play structure’s shadow flies across the ground with the sun, aligning perfectly with its butterfly form once every day.
Connection, in every sense. From West Main to the world.
From sketch to scheme
Drawings from the site visit and the weeks after.
