Of Note
IMAGES COURTESY STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS.
The plan for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston includes the Kinder Building and a new Glassell School of Art. The Kinder’s luminous canopy extends a tradition of intriguing roofscapes at the MFAH.
Fourteen Acres and a Holl by Ronnie Self, AIA
In terms of the ambitious design that was ultimately approved for the expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), the acquisition of the surface parking lot across from Mies van der Rohe’s Brown Pavilion was of utmost importance. Acquiring that humble slab of gray from the neighboring First Presbyterian Church was the critical first step that led to Stephen Holl Architects’ grand vision — a master plan to transform the existing archipelago of buildings into a coherent, 14-acre campus. All three finalists for the project (Steven Holl Architects, Morphosis Architects, and Snohetta) were asked to develop schemes for several unrelated buildings, including a new museum building on the parking lot site, a 10-story parking garage farther to the north, and a renovated
art school building. The winning proposal, by Steven Holl, FAIA, went further, delivering a true master plan rather than just the requested designs. Holl’s plan includes a new 80,000-sf building to house the Glassell School of Art (not simply a renovation), as well as a new 164,000-sf Kinder Building (to house all types of works from the collection, from 1900 onward); underground parking for 400 cars (in lieu of the requested parking garage); and new plazas designed to complement the existing Lillie and Hugh Ray Cullen Sculpture Garden, which was designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1986. Holl’s master plan is bold and pragmatic at the same time. It transforms the current piecemeal condition into a reasoned whole by responding to specific, localized circumstances and avoiding willful formal gestures. The parking site, transformed by the Kinder Building, is now the keystone that locks the whole together both urbanistically and architecturally.
5/6 2015
Texas Architect 11