Steven Holl's just-opened Winter Visual Arts Building emerged from a sketch of a kite stuck in the trees

2020-10-05T12:46:00-04:00

Just completed this month, the new Winter Visual Arts Building, designed by Steven Holl Architects, takes shape on the historic campus of Franklin & Marshal College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The formal qualities of the new structure takes its inspiration from the kite Benjamin Franklin wielded when he first "harnessed electricity." The initial sketches of the building embraces the webbed form of a kite "stuck in the trees."

Moreover, the design team moved to play off the geometry of the 200-year-old trees that surround the site. "We thought of the geometry of trees as a way to give shape to the new arts building. Instead of echoing the rectangular block of the former arts building, the new pavilion takes its shape from the inflection of the diameters of those large campus trees," the architects write in a statement.

The resulting architecture is a raised two-story "box-kite" steel frame that sits on two ground floor concrete rectangles. The creates a series...

Steven Holl designs "concave response" lighting for new visual arts building

2016-05-11T13:01:00-04:00

"We don't have a single 'style,'" Steven Holl explained in reference to his firm's new four level, 35,000 square foot Visual Arts Building commissioned for the Franklin & Marshall College. "We always try to shape a unique experience, and our approach is the same with this project. We look to create something of this place, to inspire future students."

Influenced heavily by the numerous hundred-year-old-plus trees that occupy the site, the Visual Arts Building is conceived as rising like a kite into the arboreal canopy and features a glass-enclosed forum on the ground floor that allows a clear view from the building's campus side of Buchanan Park.

A variety of faculty and advanced student studios, as well as a lecture hall/film screening auditorium and dedicated film labs, will compliment the project's classroom space.

In addition to geothermal heating and cooling, the project features an inventive, noteworthy take on lighting. In this case, the "building’s light profile is a concave r...

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Steven Holl's just-opened Winter Visual Arts Building emerged from a sketch of a kite stuck in the trees

Steven Holl designs "concave response" lighting for new visual arts building