The new home of Johns Hopkins University’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute is still at least two months away from opening.
Hopkins president Ronald Daniels said last week that he’s looking forward to a possible opening in April.
Hopkins officials had indicated the four-story building would be ready to occupy in the fall of 2024 but then changed signs around the construction site to say “OPENING 2025.” At a community meeting last fall, representatives pointed to supply chain issues and other factors for the delay.
The Agora Institute was announced in 2017 after the Stavros Niarchos Foundation committed $150 million to launch an effort with Hopkins to build an academic forum dedicated to “strengthening democracy by improving civic engagement and civil discourse worldwide.”
Hopkins named the Renzo Piano Building Workshop of Genoa, Italy, to be the design architect and chose a corner parcel on Wyman Park Drive as the location. Construction began in mid-2021, three and a half years ago. Daniels has been Hopkins’ president since 2009.
As designed by Piano, 87, the Institute’s new home is clad in glass, has numerous irregular angles and no real back side. During a gathering at the SNF Parkway Theatre on Friday, Daniels didn’t go into specifics about why the building has taken longer than expected to complete, but he said it has been the most difficult campus construction project he has ever worked on.
