Steven Holl's just-opened Winter Visual Arts Building emerged from a sketch of a kite stuck in the trees

Just completed this month, the new Winter Visual Arts Building, designed by Steven Holl Architects, takes shape on the historic campus of Franklin & Marshal College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The formal qualities of the new structure takes its inspiration from the kite Benjamin Franklin wielded when he first "harnessed electricity." The initial sketches of the building embraces the webbed form of a kite "stuck in the trees." © Steven HollMoreover, the design team moved to play off the geometry of the 200-year-old trees that surround the site. "We thought of the geometry of trees as a way to give shape to the new arts building. Instead of echoing the rectangular block of the former arts building, the new pavilion takes its shape from the inflection of the diameters of those large campus trees," the architects write in a statement. © Iwan BaanThe resulting architecture is a raised two-story "box-kite" steel frame that sits on two ground floor concrete rectangles. The creates a series...