The greening of Glasgow art school

Crowds queued round the block yesterday for a chance to hear New York architect Steven Holl outline his design.

Mr Holl, who won in collaboration with Glasgow firm JM Architects, spoke of his passion for the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who designed the iconic main building at GSA a century ago.

He also described his passion for eco-building, adding that he was glad to see some US building projects halted by the recession.

Mr Holl said he had known Mackintosh's work well since his student days in the 60s and ranked him among the founding figures of modernist architecture.

He said he recently bought a copy of every book he could find on Mackintosh, adding: "I'm very excited about this project and it's enormously important, but we're just in the first stages."

He called his building a "complementary contrast" that would engage the Mackintosh building but not ape or imitate it.

"One of the great things we learn is that 100 years later, this building can be so influential and still used for its original purpose – this is exciting and a very rare kind of thing," said Mr Holl.

His new building was "about light, more when you go into it than when you look at it from the outside".

He added: "It's calm in a rather minimal way that relates to the original building, a complementary contrast. I'm very sure that's the right approach."

Mr Holl's completed projects in the past year include the "floating skyscrapers" of a hotel, office and apartment complex in the booming Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Ongoing projects include a Centre for the Performing Arts at Princeton University and a new museum in Biarritz, France. Mr Holl's firm works closely with local architects and builders.

A planning application for Mr Holl's design will not be submitted until June, and GSA staff had asked him not to spell out specifics.

But he said his team was examining the possibility of biothermal heat-exchange systems, using wells driven deep in the ground, as they had for a project at New York's Columbia University. College staff said yesterday that biomass systems were a more likely possibility.

"When we start a project, we try to get a zero-carbon footprint," Mr Holl said. "As the process goes on, you are faced with budgets and you make adjustments."

The Shenzhen project included shaded garden areas underneath the building, and a grassed roof.

Initial GSA outline plans indicate garden areas that could become "machair" he said, referring to the shoreline pasture found in the Outer Hebrides and on the north-west coast, thick with wildflowers in the spring.

Mr Holl said: "Part of it has a green landscape. That was part of our original competition (entry], and we are developing it as a machair, with interesting dimensions – there will be a large part of green that's integral to the project."