Architect Steven Holl has completed this concrete and glass art school at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, where students can relax in an outdoor sculpture park and a ramped roof garden.

New York-based firm Steven Holl Architects' Glassell School of Art replaces a 35-year-old building as part of a major redevelopment of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (MFAH)'s campus. The scheme was first unveiled in 2015 and also includes an exhibition gallery designed by Holl, and a new conservation centre that are both still under construction.

Holl designed the art school at the north-west corner of the campus to expand the capacities of the MFAH's teaching arm, which was first established in 1927 ? three years after the museum opened.

Measuring 93,000 square feet (8,639 square metres), it contains 36 studios for both adults and children to take classes, as well as exhibition spaces, an auditorium, and a series of spaces open to the public including a cafe and gardens.
These facilities are arranged in an L-shape to wrap a central sculpture garden designed by Deborah Nevins & Associates. From this outdoor space, a grass-covered roof slopes up the longer side of the building. It forms a ramp that extends to the top of the three-storey building, which the public can walk up.

Walls comprise sandblasted, pre-cast concrete panels that are punctured by windows in varying shapes ? triangles, rhombi and rectangles ? to bring natural light into each of the workspaces.

"Our buil...