Steven Holl Shows His Richmond Project in New York

Steven Holl navigated a small crowd packed into a closet-size annex to Manhattan’s Meulensteen gallery on Thursday evening. His firm had just unveiled its design for a new Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in addition to releasing the standard set of renderings, it also mounted an exhibition of 30 models and drawings for the project. During the opening, Holl explained the plan in detail to visitors jostling through the tiny space.

The show displays the evolution of the design, which began with a pinched form torquing up from a busy intersection at the corner of VCU’s Richmond campus. That form became a 33-foot atrium gallery rising above the entrance to the 38,000-square-foot art space. Four rectangular galleries radiate out from the atrium into a sculpture garden, while a 240-seat performance space rests like a raised shoulder on one side of the building, which will be clad in pre-weathered satin-finish zinc. Project architect Dimitra Tsachrelia explained that the sculptural volume is designed to stand up to the heavily trafficked site and create a new entrance to campus, while the more traditional white-box galleries extending behind the large atrium give curators versatile spaces for showing work that varies in scale and media.

The university has already raised $15 million toward the projected $32 cost of the project, according to senior partner Chris McVoy, who expects the exhibition to help grab the attention of potential donors before it closes on June 2. The Institute itself is currently slated to open in 2015.