January 15 2010

Steven Holl, architect of the Glasgow School of Art, has delivered a lecture at the Glasgow Film Theatre outlining his most recent work and influences though not, unfortunately, any detail on the Art School extension itself. 

Holl said: “We’re just in the first stages of design, we’re still making adjustments. It’s a building about light and celebrates in a calm and minimal way the original through a complimentary contrast. There’s going to be very special green spaces in this building but I can’t talk about that”. 

David Porter, the Mack’s head, said: “We’re building a manifesto about who we are and what we’re becoming. The eminent rapport between Holl, Ian and Henry built from direct relationships now available through technology such as Skype and the ability to digitally print models from across the world is good to see. 

"By referring to the Mack but not deferring to it their sensitive manipulation of the nuances of light is poetic. Scotland is a Scandinavian country, without the economy, it has the same qualities of northern light." 

Contrasting the “Supergreen” credentials in China where developers have been falling over themselves to deliver prestige carbon conscious buildings to his home turf of America, which evinces enormous reluctance to make environmental concessions, Holl went on to speak of an outlandish project in Shenzhen, China. The Vanke Center. 

Shenzhen is the fastest growing city in Earth’s history, exploding from a population of 8k in 1980 to some 12 million people today. The average age of its citizens is 26.  Voracious urban sprawl has seen the city balloon relentlessly and it is now consuming coastal areas around the South China Sea, close to Hong Kong. 

Mindful of a pressing need to provide public open space amidst this bustling metropolis Holl devised a building on stilts, as long as the Empire State Building is tall, to free up valuable shaded parkland below.

To Holl’s amazement his “crazy” scheme won the competition.  “Most buildings have four elevations”, Holl observes. “This has six”. Uniquely this affords opportunity to employ disorientating 360 degree vistas. 

The GSA winner was now faced with the hard task of realising this lofty ambition by calling in a local engineer to merge cable stayed bridge technology with a rigid concrete frame to span enormous 50m spans between 8 concrete cores.

A scheme close to Holl’s heart was the Knut Hamsun Centre in his fathers native Norway. A museum dedicated to a local writer its backers weren’t keen on paying for geothermal heating… until Holl offered $20k of his fee toward the costs. “Much to my chagrin they took me up on it” Holl laughs, “I feel a bit used as they now advertise it as a key feature”. 

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