Steven Holl Architects Selected as Winner of Glasgow School of Art Competition

New York-based Steven Holl Architects, in collaboration with Glasgow-based JM Architects, has won the international design competition for the new building of the Glasgow School of Art on the site opposite the historic Mackintosh Building. The competition was organized by the Glasgow School of Art. The Selection Committee, chaired by Barcelona-based architect David MacKay, selected Steven Holl Architects with JM Architects by unanimous vote.

According to a statement from the Glasgow School of Art:

“The Selection Committee considered that Steven Holl Architects’ work showed a poetic use of light and their submission demonstrated a singular creative vision, scale of ambition, profound clarity and a respectful rivalry for the Mackintosh Building. The Committee believed that Holl’s approach to the craft of building, his understanding of the opportunities of new technology and an enjoyment of the challenges of sustainable design, promised a great step forward in the development of architecture in an urban setting.”

The plan for the new Glasgow School of Art draws upon the push-pull typology of light that is analogous to the original Mackintosh building but moves forward using a new language. The building is composed of volumes shaped by light and connected by a “circuit of connection” which encourages the creative contact central to the workings of the school.

Voids of light, in the form of precast concrete, are central to the building section and structural support. North and south light cuts connect studio sections, and convex light windows project from the facade.

The main body of the new building is a loose-fitting structure, which envelopes a plan composed of studio volumes. Working with proportions and allowing good levels of light into the spaces, the plan remains flexible for the future. The building skin is 100% recycled, fused glass with a solar cavity capable of harvesting heat in winter and cooling in summer.

Steven Holl said: “We are thrilled to be selected for this very important project for the new Glasgow School of Art. It is an honor to make a new architecture for a 21st century school of art across from Mackintosh’s inspiring masterwork of the early 20th century. Since my student days at the University of Washington, the amazing Mackintosh building with its tremendous light and magical scale has been a seminal reference. Mackintosh’s manipulation of the building section for light in such a variety of inventive ways has inspired our approach toward a plan of studio volumes shaped by light and connected by a ‘Circuit of Connection’ which encourages the creative contact central to the workings of the school.

100 years after completion, Mackintosh’s building continues to inspire as a work of architecture and a place to make art. The invention of an original architectural language is a fresh today as it was then. Its intensity of detail, light and material calls for the highest aspirations of a phenomenologically-driven architecture of our time. We feel the urgency of recovering the integral action of “thinking and making” in the use of the highest new technologies available. We imagine the new Glasgow School of Art to be a celebration of Knowledge: the phenomenological and experiential joys of perception supercharged by the techniques of tomorrow.”

This 2009 competition, which was to find an architect-led team and not to select a design, received submissions from over 150 international firms from which seven were shortlisted (in alphabetical order): Benson & Forsyth (London, UK); Elder and Cannon (Glasgow, UK); Francisco Mangado Architects with ZM Architects (Pamplona, Spain and Glasgow ); Grafton Architects (Dublin, Ireland); Hopkins (London, UK); John McAslan and Partners with Nord Architects (London and Glasgow); Steven Holl Architects with JM Architects (New York and Glasgow).