Steven Holl Architects is gracing the campus grounds of the University of Iowa once again with the recently topped out Visual Arts Building. The firm -- in collaboration with BNIM Architects -- won the competition in 2010 to design the new arts facility, which will house the studio departments for the School of Art and Art History. The Visual Arts Building replaced the original mid-1930s building that became heavily damaged during a flood at the campus in June 2008. The building is slated for a May 2016 opening.

SHA's design focuses greatly on forming new social spaces for students and faculty to gather and intermingle. The vertically porous facility will provide 126,000 sq.ft. of space for graduate student studios, faculty and staff offices, and galleries. Ample loft-like spaces will be allotted to the departments of printmaking, painting, photography, 3D multimedia, and sculptural arts.

Stairs and corridors that weave throughout the four-story structure were designed as "social condensors" that aim to encourage the departments to intermingle. On top of that, the Visual Arts Building will be adjacent to SHA's first arts building, Art Building West, to create the Art Meadow public gathering space.

The 200' x 180' x 68' rectilinear volume includes seven light courts, and interconnecting floors and programs. Light and natural ventilation further emphasize the building's openness, and operable windows will offer scenic campus views. 

The building will be heated and cooled by "active" slabs that consist of integrated radiant tubing in "bubble-deck" concrete floors, which SHA states is the first application of its kind in the U.S. Each elevation is developed in a curtain wall that maximizes energy performance, including sunshades on the south side of the building and high-performance glass on the north.

You can watch a live webcam of the construction site.