Steven Holl Architects: The Latest Architecture and News

Steven Holl Architects just shared the news that the firm has won the commission for the new Institute for Contemporary Art for Virginia Commonwealth University with BCWH Architects. The 32,000 square-foot building will provide gallery spaces for traveling and school exhibits, classrooms, offices, art storage spaces and an auditorium, and accommodate a sculpture garden and a café. Joseph H. Seipel, Dean of the VCU School of the Arts, exclaimed, ”We are honored to have Steven Holl, internationally recognized as one the most inspired and significant architects of our time. With Holl leading this endeavor, I am confident the ICA is destined to become an iconic building for VCU and the city of Richmond and will find its place as a prominent example of Steven Holl’s contributions to the history of architecture.” As the selection process was organized to find an architect-led team, and not a specific design, we will keep you posted on the progress of the project.

Steven Holl Architects were approved last week by the board of visitors’ finance committee to design a $19.3 million gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia.

An existing surface parking lot on the east side of VCU’s campus will be transformed into the 32,000 sqf arts institute. This will provide an opportunity to create a distinctive entrance into the campus from Broad and Belvidere streets. The program for the new gallery includes space for traveling exhibits and student exhibits, archival study area, offices, and an auditorium.

The Nanjing Sifang Art Museum designed by Steven Holl Architects is nearly complete, and on schedule to open its doors to the public in a few short months. Iwan Baan shows on his website a great photo set of the new museum which can be viewed here.

The importance of the National University of Colombia campus began with its enlightened master plan by the architect Leopold Rother in the 1930s. With its green center, classical axiality, and layered concentricity, the campus contains some wonderful examples of architecture.

Architects: Steven Holl Architects Design Architects: Steven Holl, Chris McVoy, Garrick Ambrose Senior Partner in Charge: Chris McVoy Project Architect: Garrick Ambrose Project Team: Johanna Muszbek, Scott Fredricks, Dimitra Tsachrelia Location: Bogota, Colombia Project Area: 70,000 sqf

This week our Architecture City Guide is headed to the city stars fall on. With a few notable exceptions, one can hardly be called a starchitect if s/he hasn’t designed something in Minneapolis. Since 2005 the starchitects that have fallen on this “City of Lakes” include Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Mueron, César Pelli, Michael Graves, Steven Holl, and Frank Gehry. This is a surprising number for a city just north of 380,000 people. Few cities of this size could boast as much. What’s more our list of 12 is far from complete. There are many wonderful historic and contemporary buildings mixed in with the explosion of starchitecture. Please leave comments of buildings one should not miss when visiting Minneapolis.

Architecture City Guide: Minneapolis list and corresponding map after the break!

Plans for the new Glasgow School of Art building, designed by Steven Holl Architects in association with JM Architects, received approval from the Glasgow City Council’s planning committee this week. Site preparations are scheduled for this summer, and work on the new building will immediately follow with construction scheduled to take around two years. The five story building will reside directly opposite of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterful Glasgow School of Art building.

Debate continues on the design for the Glasgow School of Art by Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with Glasgow based JM Architects. Last month William J.R. Curtis shared his critical thoughts on the new extension, referencing the diagrams by Holl as ‘cartoonlike’, the surface choices of glass ‘monotonous’, and the external volumes as ‘clumsy’. As we all know architecture is subjective and debate should be welcomed, hopefully resulting in a smart discussion focused on providing the best design solutions for a project. A critique of an extension to a building with such importance as Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art, a design that masterfully manipulates light into spaces and skillfully the nature of different materials, is expected. However, this review almost seemed personal and a bit uninformed. Curtis, during his critical rant even asks “where was the client during these intervening months?” referring to the initial announcement and presentation of Holl’s winning design and then later released drawings.

Continuing, “The unsatisfactory state of Holl’s proposal perhaps reveals what may happen when a star architect drops in from another planet and blinds a building committee with the “smoke and mirrors” of popularized phenomenology. Some good old Scottish common sense would have been in order to insist on greater rigor and a more appropriate response to the context.”

Holl took time to respond to Curtis’ article stating, “We welcome criticism as long as it’s based on an accurate understanding of our design. Unfortunately William Curtis’ article is not knowledgeable about our design,” and Holl also shares specifics about both the design material choices for the new extension (his full response following the break).

Situated on a prominent waterfront site just across the East River from the United Nations and Roosevelt Island, the Queens Library at Hunters Point is scheduled to begin construction early next year. The design, which was approved this month is a collaboration between Steven Holl and partner Chris McVoy.

When we visited Steven Holl Architects we had a chance to see the design of Queens Library at Hunters Point on the boards. Check out our recent features of works by Steven Holl Architects, including the master plans and buildings for Hangzhou Normal University in China, the Glasgow School of Art, and our previous coverage of Queens Library at Hunters Point.

Further project description of the new Queens Library at Hunters Point and images following the break.

Architects: Steven Holl Architects Location: Hunters Point, New York City, New York, USA Design Architects: Steven Holl and Chris McVoy

Steven Holl shared with us his winning entry for the Hangzhou Normal University Performing Arts Center, Art Museum and Art Quadrangle in Hangzhou, China. The pair of buildings, situated on either side of the canal, are the heart of the new campus. Holl’s concept early on was two balanced forms, one additive as seen in the design of the Performing Arts Center, and one subtractive displayed in the design of the Art Museum. This dialogue between these two buildings, the utilization of local materials, and the carbon neutral section of the new university provides for a special moment within the campus.

Follow the break for sketches and renderings of this project.

Architects: Steven Holl Architects Location: Hanzghou, China Design Architect: Steven Holl, Li Hu, Chris McVoy Project Architect: Garrick Ambrose, Yichen Lu, Roberto Bannura Project Team: Human Wu, Guanlan Cao, Francesco Bartolozzi, Michael Rusch, Johanna Muszbek, Maxim Kolbowski Frampton, Nathalie Frankowski, Scott Fredricks, Garrett Ricciardi, Jose Carlos Quelhas, Wenny Hsu Structural Engineer: China Academy of Building Research (CABR) Acoustics Consultant: Kirkegaard Associates Sustainability Consultant: Mathias Schuler (Transsolar)

Back in 2009, over 150 firms across the world entered the Glasgow School of Art competition which was seeking an architect-led team to create a building opposite Mackintosh’s masterpiece. Steven Holl, in collaboration with Glasgow-based JM Architects, proposed a submission that capitalized on the changing quality of light throughout the spaces. Holl’s vision responds to Mackintosh’s sectional emphasis by implementing large voids of light – the “circuit of connection ” – that slice through the spaces to “encourage the creative contact central to the workings of the school.”

When we visited Holl’s office, we talked Senior Partner Chris McVoy about the importance of the section for this particular project (we also chatted about their latest Shan-Shui master plan). One hundred years have passed since Mackintosh’s building opened for the School of Art, yet, as McVoy explains, although the structures represent completely different times, their attention to architectural elements, such as light, materiality and proportion, will create a relationship between the two.

Enjoy the video! Credits after the break.

When we stopped by Steven Holl’s office in New York, Senior Partner Chris McVoy spoke to us about the firm’s latest project in Hangzhou – an International Tourism Complex. The firm has a growing presence in China and, arguably, some of the team’s strongest works (such as their Linked Hybrid and Horizontal Skyscraper) are situated throughout the region. With their most recent win, the firm will redevelop the site of the oxygen and boiler plants in Hangzhou to create a master plan comprised of residential and cultural components.

More about the project, including an video with McVoy, after the break.

Last month we shared with you the six designs from the shortlisted group for the future Victoria & Albert Museum in Scotland:

Delugan Meissl Associated Architects / Kengo Kuma & Associates / REX / Snøhetta / Steven Holl Architects / Sutherland Hussey Architects

The six designs are now on exhibition at the library of Abertay University on Bell Street in Dundee until November 4th.

We now have more photographs and a short description of each proposal plus a video after the break.

We’ve just received some news from our friends at Steven Holl Architects regarding the progress of their latest private gallery and residence. Situated in the hillside of the Kangbuk section of Seoul, Korea, the project’s geometry is an experimental reaction to a 1967 sketch for a music score by the composer Istvan Anhalt, “Symphony of Modules,” discovered in a book by John Cage titled “Notations”. This strategy, which runs parallel to a research studio on “the architectonics of music,” results in three separate pavilions connected by a sheet of water that establishes the plane of reference from above and below.

More construction photos, renderings and of course, Holl’s infamous watercolors after the break.

Steven Holl Architects has received the 2010 North Norwegian Architecture Prize for the Knut Hamsun Center in Hamarøy, Norway. The Prize is awarded annually to projects with special reference to, and significance for North Norwegian historical, cultural, economic and physical conditions.

Steven Holl Architects is pleased to present ‘Su Pietra’, an exhibition of recent projects in China and Europe, which will be held at the Castle of Acaya in Lecce, Italy, from July 10, 2010 to January 15, 2011.

Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with BNIM Architects, has won the commission for the new art studio facility for the University of Iowa (UI) Arts campus.

The new building is to replace an original arts building from 1936, which was heavily damaged during a flood of the University of Iowa campus in June 2008. The proposed site is directly adjacent to and northwest of the Art Building West, designed by Steven Holl Architects, which since its opening in 2006 has received numerous awards, including the AIA 2007 Institute Honor Award for Architecture.

More info after the break.

Steven Holl Architects, in collaboration with Glasgow-based JM Architects, was awarded first prize in the international design competition for the Glasgow School of Art Competition. The selection committee, chaired by Barcelona-based architect David MacKay, sought to select an architect-led team, not a design. The committee unanimously chose Steven Holl Architects because Holl’s work demonstrated “a poetic use of light and their submission demonstrated a singular creative vision, scale of ambition, profound clarity and a respectful rivalry for the Mackintosh Building.”

More about Holl’s project after the break.