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Steven Holl Architects Wins AIA Honor Award

The University of Iowa School of Art & Art History building opened in September 2006.

Mairi Beautyman -- Interior Design, 1/19/2007 12:00:00 AM

For a hybrid educational building serving teaching based on the idea of 'open edges and center,' Steven Holl Architects takes home a 2007 AIA Institute Honor Award for Architecture. Recognizing excellence in architecture, the award honors the architecture firm’s design for the Iowa School of Art & Art History.

The project, one of 11 projects selected from 700 submissions to earn a 2007 AIA Institute Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), carried several design challenges. The design team needed to incorporate an existing 1937 brick building and weave new construction with the area’s limestone bluffs, river, and lagoon.

Holl, the jury praised, "fought for the site and created something that has become a grounding point for the university.”

In September 2006, the building opened to international acclaim. According to architecture critic Blair Kamin, "Holl hasn't just made a knock-your-eyes-out building...He's made a real place, one that painters carting around their canvases actually seem to like.”

Among Holl’s additional arts projects are the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki, Finland) and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, slated to open in June.