Famed international architect to design VCU contemporary art center

Nick Bonadies
Spectrum Editor

Internationally renowned architect Steven Holl, declared “America’s Best Architect” by Time Magazine, has been slated to design a major new contemporary art and cultural center on the VCU campus.

Holl, whom VCU School of the Arts dean Joseph H. Seipel called “one of the most inspired and significant architects of our time” in a press release, has been firmly canonized by the field’s most prestigious awards, publications and exhibitions as a central figure of modern architecture, whose numerous international commissions, according to Time Magazine, “offer a new, luminous model for buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye.”

One New York Times commentator, describing Holl’s 2007 addition to the Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. as “a near-perfect work” and “the kind of project that cements an architect’s place in the pantheon,” also called Holl’s visionary approach one that “should be studied by anyone who sets out to design … from this point forward.”

The VCU Board of Visitors approved a $2.8 million contract with New York- and Beijing-based Steven Holl Architects in May alongside next academic year’s tuition rates. VCU associate vice president of facilities management Brian J. Ohlinger said the board of visitors came to a final decision out of a staggering 64 initial proposals.

As part of their contract, Steven Holl Architects will be responsible for helping to raise funds for construction before drafting conceptual and schematic designs.

No timetable for construction, which is dependent on the success of private fundraising, has been set.

The projected $19.3 million Institute for Contemporary Art, or ICA, will take a spot currently inhabited by Parking Lot QQ on Broad and Belvidere streets, one of the most heavily traversed entrances to the VCU area. VCU Board of Visitors member Stuart C. Siegel said in an official statement that the building will form a “gateway to the university from the east.”

Plans for the 32,000-square-foot institute include approximately 8,000 square feet of gallery and installation space for both VCUarts exhibits and traveling exhibits. The design will also feature classrooms, offices, a 210-seat auditorium, archival study space, a gift shop and a café.

Seipel, who said in a press release he was “honored” to have Holl leading the project, said he was confident the Institute for Contemporary Art will become “an iconic building” for the university and the city and will “find its place as a prominent example of Steven Holl’s contributions to the history of architecture.”

Holl himself, in a statement, said that VCU’s Monroe Park Campus presents “unique opportunities for the Institute of Contemporary Art to act as a social condenser,” adding that he and his design team “envision a new architecture as a catalyst between the public and the great School of the Arts.”

Steven Holl Architects’ most recently completed projects include the Knut Hamsun Center in Norway, the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark, as well as the Horizontal Skyscraper and the Linked Hybrid complex in China. The Horizontal Skyscraper and Linked Hybrid complex are particularly noted, as with much of Holl’s work, for their achievements in ecological sustainability, centrally incorporating such features as green roofs, geothermal heating, photovoltaic panels and storm water recycling. Past work with universities includes the Glasgow School of Art, New York University’s Department of Philosophy, Higgins Hall at the Pratt Institute, and others.

View a slideshow of Steven Holl Architects’ notable work and listen to a WCVE interview with Dean Joseph Seipel on the new Institute for Contemporary Art at http://arts.vcu.edu/ica/.