a binding debate

steven holl’s buildings for the museum of fine arts,

by david heymann

36 spring Steven Holl’s promising design development proposal for Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts’ new Nancy and Rich Kinder Building is both ambitious and reason- able. Holl’s site plan, which includes a new Glassell School of Art, brings legi- bility and continuity to the museum campus. His design for the Kinder Building maximizes gallery space on a difficult, triangular site, and holds the center by strength of presence. By irregularly slicing its upper edges with the curving off- set planes of its roof, Holl has worked to make the building’s substantial mass hard to perceive precisely. Clad in backlit half-circular tubes of fritted glass that add further ambiguity, the new Kinder Building will shimmer, organizing urban space in the way a vase can give order to a slightly disorganized room.

Though the glowing facade of the Kinder Building shares attributes with Holl’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the design is more reminiscent of Hans Scharoun’s extraordinary, idiosyncratic Phil- harmonie—another opaque, scooped mass shining against a great, dark Mies museum! Like that pairing in Berlin, the organic functionalism of Holl’s Kinder Building establishes a handsome debate with the rational- ism of Mies’ great Brown Pavilion. I think as architecture, it is going to work well. So—breathe a sigh of relief—let’s get to the details. Several characteristics defne the extraordinary Fayez S. Sa- rofm campus of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). Because its growth has been controlled by the random availability of property, the MFAH ensemble consists of singular buildings on roughly adjacent blocks, not bound together by a defned campus boundary or by con- ventional spatial mechanisms like axis, symmetry, or syntax. Despite substantial individual diferences, the MFAH buildings share a recogniz- able striving presence. We understand them collectively because, like a loosely organized group of well-dressed politicians canvasing for votes in some central city neighborhood, they are more alike than they are like anything around them. (And, like politicians, each has been considered from every angle not to ofend; remarkably, none has a true backside, a phenomenon Holl’s Kinder Building continues through clever handling of the loading dock.) Most of the MFAH’s major buildings have been designed by strong relatively late in their careers, when accomplishment and cer- tainty allow them to ease up on each design commission having to prove everything. The MFAH buildings are simple rather than complex, refned rather than rough, serious rather than exuberant, bespoke rather than experimental, restrained rather than complicated, and remarkably con- fdent rather than brittle. The major buildings sustain a comfortable di- alogue perhaps best described as grunting admiration between viable, mature alternatives. The exception is the existing Glassell School, which, despite success as an educational facility, is diagrammatic and tinny as urban architecture, its glass blocks yearning to be recognized for their Modernist props.

spring 37 Preceding page: View of campus looking south from Glassell School of Art. Above and lef: Sections and MFAH CAMPUS - LONG SECTION A elevations of Glassell, Kinder, and Law Buildings. Below: Site plan for MFAH. Images courtesy MFAH. 010204080

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The MFAH master plan is defined Collectively the MFAH buildings form a ge- by block-filling buildings that are nus into which the new Kinder Building fts both discrete and interact to form a greater whole. Steven Holl ignored easily: block-like, complete, inscrutable, heavy, a competition brief to design a and discrete on the exterior; generous, regu- multi-story parking garage and lar (lacking idiosyncrasy), proper, stately, fow- instead proposed an underground solution for cars. The existing ing, and calm on the interior. This consistency Glassell building will be demolished, suggests the MFAH chooses architects heading 5 making way for a new plaza and in that design direction already, or it clever- school building. The Kinder Building is sited on what was the First ly herds them that way. The one non-building Presbyterian Church parking lot. construction on the campus—the Cullen Sculp- MUSEUM - MAIN STREET ELEVATION 010204080 6 ture Garden designed by the un-herdable Is- amu Noguchi—does not share these qualities. Fayez S. Sarofim Campus 1 Brown Pavilion In the experience of the site, it has always 2 Audrey Beck Jones Building seemed odd and cranky, its excellence not- 3 Nancy and Rich Kinder Building withstanding. It is closer in spirit to Gunnar 4 Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Birkerts’ adjacent Contemporary Arts Museum, 4 3 Sculpture Garden which, 40-plus years old, feels younger than all 5 Glassell School of Art the MFAH buildings that postdate it. MUSEUM - CROSS SECTION 6 The Brown Foundation, Inc. Plaza 010204080 a new master plan The new Kinder Building will be built on what has always been the logical place for the MFAH to expand: the parking lot next to the Noguchi

2 garden on the north side of Bissonnet, direct-

1 13 ly across from Mies’ curving Brown Pavilion 9 10 7 of the Caroline Weiss Law Building. Long the 2 8 7 12 parking lot for the adjacent First Presbyterian 8 2 Church of Houston, this open parcel is an in- 2 advertent, ill-defned hole in the center of the campus. In 2007 the MFAH was able to obtain 6 3 9 the land from the church—it continues to serve 6 3 as a shared parking lot. In 2008 the MFAH set 11 14 2 4 about establishing a shortlist of architects to 1 10 design a new building in which it could fnally 4 2 bring together its twentieth and twenty-frst 5 2 century holdings—the art5 that tracks the rise 1 and apotheosis of Modernism and its complex fallouts. (The new building is not designed for major traveling exhibitions, which will mostly continue to go to the Brown Pavilion.)

MUSEUM GROUND FLOOR PLAN MUSEUM SECOND FLOOR PLAN 38 spring 1/20” = 1’-0” 1/20” = 1’-0” 1. Central Entry Garden 1. Gallery Forum 2. Entrances 2. Gallery 3 3. Lobby 3. Gallery 4 4. Information Desk 4. Gallery 5 5. Cafe 5. Gallery 6 6. Restaurant 6. Gallery 7 7. Conference Center 7. Gallery 8 8. Gallery 1 8. Art Handling 9. Gallery 2 9. Men’s Restrooms 10. Gallery 3 10. Women’s Restrooms 11. Kitchen 12. Loading Dock 13. Parking Entry 14. Drop-Off Area MFAH CAMPUS - LONG SECTION A

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In 2012, three frms—Steven Holl, Snøhet- Blafer Foundation Center for Conservation, de- restrained Administration Building across the ta, and Morphosis—presented conceptual site signed by Lake|Flato, will be built atop half of street. New trees along the street edge will plans and proposals for the architecture of the the parking garage east of the Beck Building. further bind the plaza—partly intended for the new building. Holl was hired to proceed. Since The entire construction campaign is scheduled display of sculpture—and the Noguchi garden. the site purchase was tied to an MFAH commit- to end in fall 2019. All in all, a defned open space will now extend ment to provide parking for the church—and along Montrose from Bissonnet to Bartlett, the new building itself requires substantial glassell school of art complementing the solid mass the MFAH pres- parking—the brief the architects were given Set above two stories of underground park- ents along the three blocks of Bissonnet and included the design of a new, eight- to ten-sto- ing—part of which serves as an art forum from Binz east of Montrose. ryMUSEUM parking - MAIN ST towerREET ELEVAT onION lots the MFAH owns just to which a tunnel links to the museum—the “L” of the0102 north04 08of the existing0 Glassell School, which Holl’s three-story Glassell is organized around nancy and rich kinder building was to remain. Both Snøhetta and Morphosis a skylit, stepped concrete theater/gallery/atri- That his master plan proposal increases the included this garage tower in their designs. um/stairwell at the joint between its two legs. legibility and cohesion of the MFAH campus But Holl proposed an alternative, counter to the These legs house studios, classrooms, and sup- was likely not the only reason Holl was com- brief: bury all the parking in two garages, one port spaces along double-loaded corridors. The missioned for the Kinder Building. There are under the new Kinder Building, the other un- roof of the long eastern leg slopes continuously at least two other good ones. The frst is the der an entirely new, expanded Glassell School. from Noguchi’s garden, where it starts as an wayfnding clarity Holl often strives for in his Instead of recreating the existing school’s amphitheater, up to a pergola over the third plan making. The new Kinder Building is a MUSEUM - CROSS SECTION hulking mass, Holl’s new school is an “L” open- foor of 01the02 northern0408 leg. For0 now its surface is three-story block (set over two foors of un- ing onto a large, street-level public plaza facing mostly shown as green roof—though it’s hard derground parking) organized about a central Montrose. to imagine how that will be accomplished or skylit entry and circulation court. This court is Aside from providing much needed interior maintained. Regardless, the view from the roof linked to both the Glassell and Law Buildings space, the immediate intelligence of rebuilding deck over the plaza will be compelling. Though by tunnels. (The tunnel to Law comes in where

2 Glassell is readily apparent. In Holl’s campus Moneo’s Beck Building is largely hidden, the the Turrell tunnel links to Beck.)

13 9 plan, the plaza provides a visible outdoor arena rest of the MFAH campus is seen against the Holl imparts a simple logic to the complex 10 7 for arts activities, balancing the current center larger context of Hermann Park, the Medical truncated-triangular shape of the building 2 8 7 12 8 of indoor visitor activity in Rafael Moneo’s Au- Center, and Rice University. mass given to the Kinder Building by the site. drey Jones Beck Building; it integrates Carlos The school’s elevations are composed of Into each of its three long sides, he cuts two 2 Jiménez’s Central Administration Building into vertical precast concrete panels assembled in small, three-sided, open, vertical, transpar- the perceptible district of the museum; and, a regularly irregular pattern of parallelograms ently glazed courtyards at regular intervals. 6 3 9 with minor modifcations to Noguchi’s existing and trapezoids (a familiar current trope, with Into the southeast corner of the short trun- 6 3 bounding walls, it embraces the sculpture gar- enough shapes repeating and reversing so you cated side—the public corner facing Mies and 11 14 2 4 den, recognizing its central importance. And it cannot perceive an order). Large expanses of Moneo—he cuts a larger vertical court. These 1 translucent OKALUX glazing span between 10 also removes the one building in the collection courts crucially break down the scale of the 4 2 not at the level of the others’ discourse. the precast panels. The panels and glazing are exterior mass, which is roughly as big as ei- 5 2 5 To continue providing parking, Holl’s new set variously along, at an angle to, or in from ther the Law or Beck Buildings. On the interi- 1 Glassell School has to be built before the Kind- the edges of the exposed concrete foor slabs. or of the ground foor, the courtyards establish er Building. Construction begins this summer. The overall efect demands attention—perhaps the various points of entry and the dimension The Kinder Building will then follow. After the more than any other building in the complex. of the various programs. On the upper foors, Kinder is completed, the new Sarah Campbell That will likely work well against Jimenez’s the courtyard cuts determine the length of the

MUSEUM GROUND FLOOR PLAN MUSEUM SECOND FLOOR PLAN 1/20” = 1’-0” 1/20” = 1’-0” spring 39 1. Central Entry Garden 1. Gallery Forum 2. Entrances 2. Gallery 3 3. Lobby 3. Gallery 4 4. Information Desk 4. Gallery 5 5. Cafe 5. Gallery 6 6. Restaurant 6. Gallery 7 7. Conference Center 7. Gallery 8 8. Gallery 1 8. Art Handling 9. Gallery 2 9. Men’s Restrooms 10. Gallery 3 10. Women’s Restrooms 11. Kitchen 12. Loading Dock 13. Parking Entry 14. Drop-Off Area MUSEUM - LONG SECTION

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67 largely opaque gallery blocks and set up the the adjacent Noguchi garden, which in the ren- 9 7 10 2 rhythm of the experience: art, relief, art, relief. derings now seems meaningfully connected 8 In Holl’s design the Kinder Building’s ground rather than broodingly hermetic.

5 1 foor is largely open through transparent glaz- It isn’t clear yet how the design will accom-

6 3 ing to adjacent outside spaces and connecting modate darkness (for the exhibition of draw-

2 views. It is mostly given over to present con- ings, photographs, electronic media, etc.). And 1 4

4

ventions of the art museum as socialMUSEUM entity: - CROSS SECTION en- the relative scale of exhibition spaces seems re- 5 010204080 3 try, circulation court, café, restaurant, confer- markably consistent—the source of some dif- ence center, store. But there is still space for culties with Breuer’s great Whitney Museum of three galleries, beginning the circling exhibi- American Art building. This consistency is al-

tion sequence around the open, vaguely ovoid leviated somewhat by a slight ramping of the

central court and its elegant, ribboning stair. foor plate on each upper level. The gallery box-

The upper two foors are each a ring of regular es will thus vary somewhat in height; the occa- gallery boxes around this court. These boxes sional steps and ramps add, I think, a slight but

are simple, 67 individual blocks of space defned necessary grace to the circulation sequence. 9 7 10 2 with opaque concrete walls—though the interi- Overall the plan is refreshingly free of exces- 8 or fnish is not yet determined. Each is further sive architectural gesture, and, since neither

subdivided5 within into simple confgurations of room nor path seem overtly favored, this would 1

6 rooms by what one assumes are mostly alter- appear to be a template to favor curators, and 3 able sub-walls. The layout in plan seems direct, committed viewing. 2 1 4 4 fexible, and legible to the visitor. The second other reason Holl was the logical

5 It is the outside3 walls of these gallery blocks candidate for this commission is his skill with, that are clad with the custom-fabricated half- for lack of a better term, discrete thingy-ness— round glass tubes; the essential task of these in particular, the rich, ambiguous simplicity of tubes is to animate the substantial opaque mass discrete thingy-ness he has been achieving in

of the building. The drawings show occasional his buildings in this advanced stage of his ca-

voids in these exterior concrete walls where reer. Kenneth Frampton has pointed out that

one hopes a distorted, liquid natural light will Holl, like Álvaro Siza Vieira, has long argued (in enter through those tubes. The uppermost of both writings and designs) for the primacy of

9 10 the gallery foors and the central court also the site, on the one hand, and for the building 2 7 8 take in natural light from slit windows in the not to have to overtly refect the specifcs of building’s roof, which is composed of adjacent,

6 3 irregular curving planes. In the not yet fully developed building sections—it’s not clear how ______1 4 artifcial light will work, nor how glare will be 5 controlled—light enters in the gaps formed be- where the mies building strives tween the ofset curves of these planes, some- what like an upside-down version of the roof of Holl’s Stretto House in . Holl’s sketches to be entirely legible, the holl

explain the roof panel shapes as derived from

“clouds.” The analogy is a useless stretch, and building seems intentionally not really because Holl’s “clouds” are spherical, but because Holl has long and far more con- ambiguous. vincingly argued for the primacy of sensory 2 13 experience over symbol or sign in the under- 7

8 12 standing of architectural meaning. The term

2 here is used to convince by sleight of hand— the site, on the other. Since that is a fairly apt

6 3 9 hard to disagree with clouds!—so I’m trying to description of how the MFAH campus architec-

11 14 avoid using it. 2 ture works to begin with, one might have seen 4

10 Given the difculty of the geometry of the his hiring as preordained. In any event, Holl

2 5 2 buildable site, Holl manages to wring a tremen- follows through not only with his initial site 1 dous percentage of the volume back for exhi- clarifcation, but also with the development of bition with remarkably little support space in the form of the building that the site gesture the plans. In the current drawings, he avoids frees. tactics (often arising to recognize site circum- In designing the Kinder Building, Holl has stance) that occasionally make his plans man- clearly given careful consideration to the di- nered, picturesque, or infexible. Instead he lemma of Mies’ Brown Pavilion across the seems to have focused on sequence and adja- street—how could you not do so? In the illus- Plans for roof, third floor, second floor, and first floor of the Kinder Building. Courtesy MFAH. cency, on how one simple space leads or con- trations the relationship seems well managed. nects to the next. This can be beautifully seen The urban space is given meaning by the cal- in the views to and from the ground foor and culated diference of the two objects, rather

40 spring View of Kinder Building entrance looking north from Main Street. Courtesy MFAH.

than by traditional negative or positive read- problem. Do you remember that era’s emphat- is the Modern exemplar of this way of think- ings of the shape of space, which, in this in- ic hope that after-Modern urban space might ing. Its power arises in part from your not be- stance, does not really matter. Both buildings be resolved through a concentration on a con- ing able to say why it is the way it is, yet it are powerful and serene. But where the Mies sistent urban fabric—binding the city togeth- does not seem “composed.” Mies’ position, still building strives to be entirely legible, the Holl er by making things similar—naively ignoring labeled rationalism (though in retrospect it is building seems (at least in the renderings) in- the marketplace city’s resistance to that very hardly that), was that the idiosyncrasies of tentionally ambiguous. In the uncertainties of thing? Since then, groundbreaking works by program should be suppressed in favor of an its form and material presence, it ofers doubt Siza, Frank Gehry, Herzog & De Meuron, and absolute order that achieved its urban conse- in the face of certainty, and it seems to do this others have activated cities through a dialogue quence through an apparent legibility of new happily, refracting light where the Mies build- between ever more powerfully diferent urban construction techniques. The historic paradigm ing absorbs it. The calculated disagreement of pieces. of this approach would be the Parthenon. The these two central buildings will give powerful Curiously, the underlying tension between distinct advantages and disadvantages of Mies’ order to the overall campus, and coming upon Holl’s Kinder Building and Mies’ Brown Pavil- position—a powerful space that is absolutely these two sizable protagonists should be like ion goes back (at least) to a debate between merciless to almost everything set within it— stumbling onto a fairly intense debate taking members of The Ring, an architectural collec- are entirely evident in Mies’ Neue Nationalgal- place in public. tive in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. erie, which sits near Scharoun’s Philharmonie The core of the debate arose from a disagree- in Berlin’s Kulturforum. berlin, ment between Mies and Hugo Häring (later The similarity of the two situations extends Actually, the particular nature of that debate taken up by Häring’s immediate follower Hans beyond the forms and discourse of the build- is worth a bit more consideration. For as many Scharoun). Though both believed in a rejection ings: it includes a larger desire to create a leg- years as I can recall, the Bissonnet parking of historicism, they difered on the degree to ible arts forum in the central city over an area lot site and some variant of the Kinder Build- which a building should express uncertainty. of a number of city blocks. In bombed-out post- ing program have been given to architecture Häring’s position, called organic functional- war Berlin, they had arguably about as little students. The vast majority have broken their ism, was that the various purposes of a build- usable historic context as Houston. And in the teeth trying to cope with the impossible, mag- ing, logically pursued in design, would lead to disagreement between the Philharmonie and isterial, and slightly condescending tectonic new and surprising forms. A good historic ex- the Neue Nationalgalerie, one can sense a city sureness (and the weirdly implicit morality) of ample of what he meant would be a Gothic ca- that imagines its future as not uniform, some- Mies’ Brown Pavilion. When I was a student in thedral, which, conceived largely to shape an thing I admire in an age of doubt. the early 1980s we simply did not have the de- interior space, nonetheless gives compelling Despite similarities in site consideration, sign tools to resolve—even to understand—the urban order. Scharoun’s Berlin Philharmonie there are certainly critical diferences between

spring 41 floor plans Core Program Junior School Studio School Shared Programs Reception / Exhibition ILS / Cafe Administration

Top: Glassell School of Art plans from ground floor to roofop. Above: Glassell facade and Brown Foundation, Inc. Plaza (lef) and Berlin Philharmonie seen from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany. Drawings and rendering courtesy MFAH. Photo by Nathan Sheppard.

Scharoun and Holl’s approaches to developing rather than the fact. That said, Peter Blundell firms form. Scharoun began with a profound con- Jones notes that Scharoun’s actual porosity no design : steven holl architects, nyc sideration—and often complex spatial develop- longer works: “[t]hese are just glaring exam- associate architect: ment—of interior needs and experiences, and ples of a general confict which has arisen be- kendall/heaton associates, inc., houston, tx how these were tied to the urban situation. For tween Scharoun’s intentions and the condition mep consultant: icor associates, llc, iselin, nj this building Holl seems to begin with ideas of of public life today.” structural engineers: cardno haynes whaley, houston, tx; guy nordenson and associates, nyc complex exterior presence and simple interior I appreciate the simplicity of Holl’s plans, civil engineers: confgurations; he has intelligently fgured out which support rather than diagnose, criticize, walter p moore, houston, tx how to allow for both those conditions to coex- or recast the norms of the current public life of facade consultant: knipper helbig, inc., nyc ist. With Scharoun, intent on making an archi- the art museum. The ambiguities of the form of lighting consultant: l’observatoire international, nyc tecture for a new democracy, the remarkable the building are not entirely at odds with the construction manager: open-ness (with its many entries) is earned plans either. If Holl has renewed an old debate, mccarthy building companies, houston, tx from the concept of a populace fowing in from his terms are thus slightly more civil, in keep- project management: multiple sides; with Holl the same potential, ing with the idea that these buildings are col- the projects group, fort worth, tx arising from the repeated courtyard cuts, is leagues that respectfully disagree. n slightly deceiving, the appearance of access

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