University of Iowa building named to Architectural Digest list of top new university structures

The University of Iowa's Visual Arts Building has been named to Architectural Digest’s list of top new university structures from around the world.

The list of nine buildings includes structures at Rice University, Cornell Tech, Duke University and the University of Bergen in Norway, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, Columbia University and Tsinghua University in China.

The magazine described the structure as a "series of boxes, stacked haphazardly on top of one another three deep, and within each, cubelike windows scattered about."

The 126,000 square-foot Visual Arts Building houses spaces for more than a thousand students studying studio arts, art history and art education. The five-story building features clouded glass, which gives the interior a diffused glow and soft light for students as they work. The building also has a green roof where students can work that also catches and mitigates rainwater runoff.

Students and UI personnel moved to the building in May 2016 from the Studio Arts building, a renovated old Menards building at 1375 Highway 1. The university began leasing the space after the flood in 2008 destroyed the old Art Building East, where the UI School of Art and Art History used to reside. 

Steven Holl Architects, the firm that designed the Visual Arts Building, has gone on to add more university arts buildings to its resume. Most recently, the firm is working on a campus expansion for the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, according to Architectural Digest.