Dorothy Johnson

The new Art Building West on the University of Iowa campus, designed by world-renowned architect Steven Holl, provides an extraordinary space for students to study the visual arts. Students paint, draw, design, photograph and display their art in a work of art for the architecture itself is sculpted space and light. They learn about art history, criticism and education in magnificently designed classrooms. They produce new media in a theater designed specifically for art production on the cutting edge. They study in a library flooded with light. Steven Holl has created a building that is already considered unique in the world. Inspired by Picasso’s 1912 sculpted guitar, the new art building for the School of Art and Art History, is designed to encourage aspiring artists to reach for the highest forms of creative expression. Made of weathered steel with its rich reddish tones, and glass, both clear and translucent, the building is permeated with light. It is situated on the Hutchinson Quarry Pond with the cantilevered wing (the neck of the guitar), conceived of as a type of suspension bridge, extending over the water. This wing over the water points to the 1936 art building across the street and is a metaphor for the bridge between tradition and innovation, the hallmark of education at the School of Art and Art History. A magnificent suspended staircase, an engineering feat, connects the different levels of the building and provides spectacular views of the building (for this is a building that due to its unusual shape and angles looks constantly at itself) and the surrounding site—the pond, the bluff, the landscaping. In this presentation we will take a visual tour of the building via stunning images and also learn about its conception and development through the watercolor designs of Steven Holl who began his career as a painter.