|
|
     |
|
|
|
by Daniel Thomas
"I don't know a thing about architecture, but your building is just too smooth."
Steven Holl remembers hearing these words from a member of the Board of Regents in 1998. With them his design for the architecture building addition was rejected. "It should be more like Pillsbury Hall over there," he was told.
Holl, Time magazine's 2001 Architect of the Year, had just presented a concrete block-clad design. After thirteen years living with the project, he thought it was dead. He was already stretching the budget, and remembers thinking, "What could be cheaper than concrete block?"
Holl kept at it, though, and switched to the copper sheets with horizontal standing seams that recently began to appear on the building. This design not only satisfied the board, but also allowed for a lighter structure that cost $250,000 less than the previous design.
A Driving Vision
When he graduated from university in 1971, Holl says he was ardently idealistic, and didn't want to have anything to do with the mundane details of building. And although he soon saw the necessity of architecture's practical side, he never lost his passion for visionary architecture driven by a simple, central idea.
Beginning his design of a dormitory complex currently being built at Michigan Institute of Technology, Holl handed out an organic sponge to each of his designers, telling them, "Study that we've got to make a building like this."
The driving idea for the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture addition was the integration of the two schools--architecture and landscape architecture. According to CALA dean Thomas Fisher, the college was already working towards this idea in its philosophy and academics.
Holl's original 1988 design was for a large circular addition joined to the current square building to form an 8-shape. But it took ten years for the new addition and current building renovation to rise high enough on the University's priority list to receive most of the $26.4 million request. By that time, the budgeted money wasn't enough to pay for the 110,000-square foot addition that was originally planned.
So Holl drew up a new design, changing the inward-looking circle into an outward-looking cruciform shape. Holl said his brother called the design "the project that was a zero--and became a plus."
The four arms of the building interlace with the four gardens between them and symbolize the integration of two schools, Fisher says. Although the building used up the project funds, he says the college is still fundraising to pay for the gardens. The planned gardens each reflect one of the four seasons, and come together at the center of the cruciform, where the lobby lies between large picture windows.
"When you're in the building you look out into the landscape and when you're in the landscape, you can look right through the building," Fisher explains.
Fisher adds that the emphasis on integrating landscape and building will become even more apparant as the trees in the gardens grow and the building's copper exterior oxidizes to a patina green, a process that takes about a decade.
While it may eventually merge into its gardens, the building is not designed to meekly blend in to the campus. Rather, Holl intends the three projecting end walls to terminate views along Church Street and Pillsbury Drive. The building contrasts significantly with its neighbors on Pillsbury Drive, falling more in line with the appearance of the Weisman Art Gallery and McNamara Alumni building. When asked about the campus' two other metal-plated buildings, Holl merely said, "I admire the courage of the University to hire such people."
The location and unconventional design have already elicited strong opinions, and Fisher admits that, without its gardens, the new building "looks very severe." In an October 1999 article, Minnesota Daily columnist Dan Maruska said the addition conformed to fleeting architectural fashion and clashed with the functional, subtle beauty of the original 1958 building.
The Engineering Inside
The building's unconventional engineering goes deeper than the 55-mm copper shell. Between two layers of gypsum, the 3-foot thick exterior walls contain heating pipes, HVAC ducts, structural members and rigid insulation. Together with Holl, Guy Nordenson, the structural engineer, conceived of the thick walls as a cost-saving measure, Fisher said. According to Jay Biedny, project manager for Ellerbe Becket, this addition was less expensive for its size than most of Holl's designs.
Since the narrow arms of the plan allow the ductwork to feed the whole building from the sides, there is no need for a hung ceiling. This allows the possibility of redesigning floor-space; the walls can be moved without worrying about ductwork and wiring in the ceiling. The thick walls also make for some nice window seats.
Entering through the main west doorway, this design makes the building's skeleton immediately evident. The bare concrete planks over the central reception area reveal another innovation in the spine. The lobby also boasts of it by allowing a clear view through the whole structure.
In order to eliminate the need for structural shear walls, the planks were suspended on scaffolding while the concrete floors and pillars were poured on top of and around them. With another thin finish pour on top and the smooth pre-cast planking below, the combined concrete floor takes the shear loads and has the smooth texture Holl envisioned. These 13-inch concrete floors work together with a 15-ton truss to support the library above and allow the open lobby space to span both floors.
Leaving the ground level offices and auditorium, the second-story library gives off a bright welcome with a two-story wall of glowing glass flooding the reading room and stacks with white light. According to Steven Weeks, member of the Building Space Planning Committee, this was the largest such channel glazing installation in the country when it was designed. Two 10-inch wide glass U-channels trap encase a layer of translucent white insulation and give a combined U-value of 0.6.
The channel glazing windows also surround the top level studio space for third-year graduate students. It is even brighter than the library, with what Holl calls a "silky glow" almost straining the eye in full sun. The studio spreads out on three wings and cannot be subdivided because of fire code regulations. Still, as Fisher notes, it is a great room with wide window benches and the best view around.
Moving in
Architecture student Robin O'Brien is eager to move in and see what she says has been kept secret as a "big mystery." Fellow Masters degree student Finn Boulding looks forward to sharing the addition's studio space with landscape architecture students.
"They're right there, but we never see them," Boulding says, motioning across the original building's central courtyard to the strangers who will soon be neighbors.
Architecture major Tiegen Leonard is looking forward to using the large library. The closed stacks and tiny temporary library in the Architecture building basement were part of the challenge to overcome for the college, which has been spread all around campus. Though many problems were solved when the renovations on the original building were completed at the end of last semester, Fisher says that, even with the new addition, the college has already run out of space.
The renovated and new buildings are fully air-conditioned. Since more classes will now be held during the summer term, the college will move towards a trimester system. Fisher hopes to move into the building in May.
So, naysayers who don't like the building's exterior will just have to learn to live with it. Holl has faced his critics down before. When people complained about his ear-shaped sinks at the Helsinki Museum of Modern Art, he simply responded, "But you've never seen a sink like that before."
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
www.cala.umn.edu/BuildingCALA.html
www.stevenholl.com
