MFAH groundbreaking spurs imagination for the future
As construction of Kinder Building launches, in-progress Glassell builds excitement
Groundbreakings rarely stimulate the eyes, no matter how large the tent or how shiny the ceremonial shovels.
But during the official construction launch for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Nancy and Rich Kinder Building on Wednesday, a dramatic and tangible backdrop helped spur imaginations. The angled, jigsaw-like structure of another big piece of the museum’s campus-redevelopment project, the new Alfred J. Glassell School of Art, already has a clearly defined shape and is on track to open in January.
Though museum director Gary Tinterow predicted the Kinder Building will be an “instant landmark,” architect Steven Holl couldn’t ignore the progress of the adjacent Glassell site, which he hadn’t visited since the last groundbreaking on the museum’s campus in October 2015.
Holl oversaw the creation of more than 30 wooden architectural models when he was designing the Glassell, and anyone can watch the online EarthCam fixed on the construction site.
But walking through the building recently left him quietly gob-smacked. So little of what architects design usually gets made, he said.
He declared the Glassell one of his firm’s best and most extreme “integrations of geometry and structure,” seeming to marvel that such a thing could even be possible: a building that would “express itself” only when all 140 of its one-of-a-kind, tilt-up concrete panels are in place and tied together by the end of this month.
Their heft pushes the envelope of the technique: The largest panels weigh 43,000 pounds, which is 15,000 pounds more than Holl previously employed for a chapel in Seattle.
The coloration, crispness and sandblasted texture of the concrete awed him, too. That’s not so easy to achieve, he said. “When the sunlight hits them, they look like giant pieces of stone. They are almost like Stonehenge.”
From an even bigger-picture perspective, Holl was pleased to see how the angular walls of his relatively economical school building emphasize Isamu Noguchi’s architecture for the Cullen Sculpture Garden.
“Now you can understand that there’s a relation to Noguchi’s walls,” Holl said.
He may be a star in his own right, and his additions are significant attention-getters, but Holl also envisions himself responding to, and honoring, aspects of the existing campus buildings by Mies van der Rohe and Rafael Moneo.
The Glassell’s L-shaped design also enables a lively extension to the sculpture garden, the Brown Foundation Plaza. Designed by the New York firm Deborah Nevins & Associates, the plaza will have a splash pool, shade trees and movable furniture as well as several sculptures of its own.
Although both the Glassell and Kinder buildings will have light-filled central entry areas that are open several stories to their ceilings, they are markedly different in every other way.
“People will think there’s two different architects,” Holl said.
He characterized the school building as “robust.” The Constructivist-style Glassell is an earth-bound 80,000 square feet, anchored by an east-side roof that slopes from ground level to a roof terrace that Holl refers to as “the invite of the place.”
With a view that also takes in the sculpture garden and the Caroline Wiess Law Building across the street, the terrace will be a fine place to watch the Kinder Building construction. Visitors there will sense that the museum’s zig-zaggy 14 acres are actually a campus.
The Kinder will look airy enough to fly, glowing at night from its many glass walls, a sheath of translucent glass tubes and a cloud-inspired roof. Holl said the “cold jacket” sheath has environmental as well as aesthetic benefits, with a “chimney effect” that draws air upward as sun hits the building, reducing solar gain by about 90 percent.
The Kinder will be more than twice as large as the Glassell. Its not-quite triangular form is cut by seven incisions that appear held together by “vertical gardens,” six of which will have water at ground level.
Inside, the Kinder will have 54,000 square feet of gallery space for modern and contemporary art, a 30 percent addition to the museum’s current exhibition capacity. The largest part of its permanent collection has been in storage for years. The huge Alexander Calder mobile that once dangled in Cullinan Hall is among the legacy pieces returning to view.
A 200-seat theater, a fine-dining destination restaurant and a cafe are also in the mix, along with additional underground parking that will connect to the Glassell lot. Visitors will be able to take air-conditioned pedestrian tunnels underneath Bissonnet to the other buildings, emerging next to James Turrell’s “The Light Inside” tunnel — although Holl can’t imagine why people wouldn’t prefer to walk through the beautifully shaded sculpture garden instead. (That space, which has been neglected, will be revitalized.)
During the groundbreaking, Tinterow thanked donors, referring to them as “investors” and “the true architects of this extraordinary endeavor” as he made an inspired plea for more.
The museum’s capital campaign is still $60 million shy of its $450 million goal, which includes $100 million in endowment funds.
“We are, in our own way, making history,” Tinterow said later. “This isn’t about egos and names. It’s about the preservation and creation of culture, which is especially important at a time when some people are From top: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Willard Holmes stands where visitors will emerge from the underground garage into the new Glassell School of Art; architect Steven Holl says he’s enjoying seeing his designs come to fruition; renderings depict a natural-lightfilled second-floor gallery in the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building and the Glassell lobby’s open stairway. questioning its value.”
He said the fund-raising is on schedule, that it was his goal to have 85 percent of the campaign pledged by the time the Kinder Building construction began. “Seeing a building rise and conducting hard-hat tours can seal the deal for donors who have not yet participated in the early days of a campaign,” he added.
A less conspicuous element of the expansion project that will not be open to the public is also under construction atop the museum’s Binz parking garage. Lake/Flato Architects designed the new Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Conservation Center.
Increasing the endowment is important because the entire campus expansion will add $5 million annually to the museum’s operating costs. The endowment fluctuates with the market, generally falling between $1.15 and $1.2 billion.
Tinterow said, “$1.25 billion would be terrific.”
The conservation center is a one-crane project, the Glassell is a two-crane project, and the Kinder Building will be a three-crane project, explained chief operating officer Willard Holmes, the micro-detail-oriented executive overseeing all of the construction. At once.
Most institutions would erect one building at a time, Holmes deadpanned. “We do three.”
Although last year’s storms pinched the schedule for excavating the Glassell structure, its underground parking lot opened a few weeks ago. The conservation center is scheduled to open in early 2019, and the Kinder Building is slated for a late-2019 opening.
Holmes, not wanting to waste a minute, already had real shovels in the ground by noon Wednesday.