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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has released plans for an ambitious $450 million expansion that will transform it into one of the largest art campuses in the US. The 14-acre masterplan will include three new buildings - one by Texas-based Lake|Flato Architects and two others by museum aficionado Steven Holl Architects - connected by a pedestrianized landscape of reflecting pools and gardens.
The first scheduled to break ground (this year) is the Steven Holl-designed, 80,000-square-foot new home for the Glassell School of Art. The L-shaped, pre-cast concrete structure will, as MFAH describes, pride itself as an extension of the campus landscape, featuring a stepped amphitheater that leads up to a walkable, trellised roof garden.
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Soon after Glassell, Lake|Flato Architects will begin construction on the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Center for Conservation. Both, the conservation center and School of Art are expected to be complete by 2017.
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The expansion’s third and final structure to be constructed is the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, also designed by Steven Holl Architects. A “complimentary contrast to the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed Caroline Wiess Law Building (1958/74) and stone facade of Rafael Moneo’s Audrey Jones Beck Building (2000), the 164,000-square-foot exhibition building will be entirely dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century art.
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At the ground level, seven vertical gardens will punctuate the building's largely translucent facade, while two floors of gallery space centers around a three-level atrium - all housed beneath the structure’s “luminous canopy” that deliberately references the “billowing clouds” of Texas’ “big sky.” A 202-seat Lynn and Oscar Wyatt Theater, restaurant, café, and meeting rooms will also be included within the building.
The entire expansion is slated for completion by 2019.