The new building will replace the existing 1936 School of the Arts building, badly damaged by floods in June 2008. The new volume will adjoin the West Building of the Arts, built by Stephen Hall in 2006 from the northwest. a cliff, the new building, with its simple plan, returns to the regular grid of the university complex, defining the new campus space as a "meadow of the arts."
The new campus for the University of Iowa School of Arts and Art History should expand its capabilities: 11,700 m2 of loft space will house the departments of ceramics, sculpture, metal, photography, printing and 3D-graphics. There will also be workshops for graduate students, studios and offices of professors and other employees of the university, exhibition spaces.
Since the 1930s, modern ideas about what an art school should be based on the idea of interconnection and mutual intersection of different disciplines, and in recent years computer technology has made the connection between different types of art more and more obvious. It is these ideas of maximum interaction at all levels that have found material expression in the "porous" architecture of the Hall - the volume in which "pores" are a system of interconnected public spaces where people are constantly circulating.
In 2006, Hall decided the volume of the West Wing in a flat composition, with a system of public areas developing in a horizontal direction. Now the porosity is vertical, and the composition is volumetric. The mentioned interaction takes place mainly in seven large - through to the entire height of the four-storey building - atriums that appear where parts of the general massif seem to have been removed. Students and teachers see what is happening in different parts of the building, and this encourages them to communicate. In addition, the glass partitions of the workshops adjacent to the public areas also contribute to the transparency and openness of the entire system.
Thanks to the interfloor floors slightly shifted horizontally relative to each other, an interesting geometry is formed, which led to the appearance of numerous balconies - areas for communication, relaxation and informal outdoor activities. In addition to such an already complex plasticity, stairs also serve as a space for dialogue: tables and chairs have appeared on some sites, while others - with sofas - become real living rooms.
Sunlight and fresh air enter the building through the same atriums - light wells; natural ventilation is also provided through the windows. The concrete frame of the building regulates the external heat capacity. An internal water-based cooling and heating system is also planned. The cladding, made of blue-green Rheinzink (ventilated titanium-zinc shell), is combined with perforated stainless steel panels that protect the interior from the sun's rays from the south-east and south-west. Considering also the green roof in use, the Fine Arts Building, scheduled for completion in 2016, promises to earn a LEED Gold Certification.
