A towering wooden structure that seemed to rise almost overnight along the Cuyahoga River is now open for anyone to walk through, free of charge, at Canal Basin Park in downtown Cleveland. Centrum Kolossio, a 2,500-square-foot installation weighing more than 15,000 pounds, will welcome visitors from Friday through Sept. 13, offering four connected rooms and several community porches built for lingering, talking, and taking in the riverfront.
The piece is the work of Midnight Art Club, a Cleveland-based collective founded by artist David Biro that has grown from five initial members into more than 100 active participants, according to Cleveland Arts Events. As reported by News 5 Cleveland, Biro said Centrum Kolossio means “central theater,” and described the finished structure as inspiring, reflective, and calming. He called the installation a place to have conversations with friends, and framed the group's broader mission as a form of blue-collar philanthropy centered on sharing artwork with the city and giving back.
Midnight Art Club spent nine months designing and fabricating the piece before an assembly team of five to six people put it together at the park in just a few days, per the same News 5 Cleveland report. That fast assembly followed a much longer road behind the scenes: the collective spent four or five months securing city approvals before construction could even begin, work that appears in official municipal records as project ART26-006, reviewed and approved by the City of Cleveland Planning Commission at its July meeting.
A Structure Built for Wandering, Day or Night
Visitors can walk inside Centrum Kolossio and move through its rooms at their own pace, with sunlight casting changing shadows throughout the day and the structure lit up after dark, the station's report notes. The design draws on Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic architectural influences, a signature of Midnight Art Club's work that has previously produced installations such as Jali, Palatcium, and Sofya Lumina, according to Cleveland Arts Events. Early visitor reaction has been positive, and the piece is designed to be taken apart and moved to different locations rather than staying put permanently.
Before it ever reached Cleveland, Centrum Kolossio made its debut at Miami's Love Burn arts festival in February, an annual regional event inspired by Burning Man, as noted by CoolCleveland. That Florida run capped the same nine-month design and fabrication process before the piece traveled north for its current home along the Cuyahoga.
A Collective With a History of Navigating City Approvals
This is not Midnight Art Club's first attempt to bring large-scale work into Cleveland's public parks. In May 2024, the group presented concept plans to the Cleveland Landmarks Commission for a tennis-court-sized temporary structure in Tremont's Lincoln Park, a proposal that required timing adjustments to avoid conflicting with neighborhood events, according to Signal Cleveland. The following year, the collective joined the 2025 “Rooms to Let” initiative in Slavic Village, creating an outdoor sculpture meant to draw attention to vacant storefronts and neighborhood blight, as detailed by FreshWater Cleveland. The group says it remains open to new members interested in making art.
Why Canal Basin Park, and Why Now
The installation's arrival lands in the middle of a much larger transformation already underway at Canal Basin Park. The 20-acre greenspace sits at the confluence of the Ohio & Erie Canal and the Cuyahoga River, serving as “Mile Zero” and the northern terminus of the Towpath Trail, according to Canalway Partners. It is also the only site in the country where a National Heritage Area, an America's Byway, and an American Heritage River designation all overlap, per Take A Hike.
The park is currently undergoing a comprehensive, award-winning redesign led by urban design firm Merritt Chase, which the Cleveland City Planning Commission unanimously approved in schematic form in January 2025 and which later won the 2025 Award of Excellence from the Ohio Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, according to NEOtrans. That redevelopment is part of Cleveland's broader “Vision for the Valley” master plan to modernize riverfront infrastructure and expand public access along the Cuyahoga, per Canalway Partners. The Towpath Trail's 2021 completion into downtown Cleveland connected the park directly to Cuyahoga Valley National Park and more than 300 miles of regional trails, a link Hoodline covered when it reported on the Celebrate Trails Day bike ride at the same park last year.
Though the wooden structure appeared to rise suddenly along the riverfront, its path to Canal Basin Park ran through months of design review, municipal permitting, and structural engineering rather than any spontaneous build. For now, the free installation is simply open for anyone walking or biking the Towpath Trail to step inside, sit on one of its community porches, and see the four-room structure for themselves before it comes down after Sept. 13.
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