The delicate glass-and-metal studios enclosed by the long, low brick walls of the Mattin Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are coming down. It is a significant loss because it is a deceptively modest but exceedingly rich building by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien—and it is just 20 years old.
The Mattin was a 50,000-square-foot center for visual arts, dance, and theater in three structures surrounding an intimate courtyard. It is a subtle building that may have seemed expendable because it almost disappears beyond a group of trees. Its cloistered, introverted personality contrasts with the university’s green quads of stolid Neo-Georgian structures. It revealed itself as one approached and descended into the courtyard via brick-railed ramps and stairs. While intricate layering of materials evoked the heft of older structures, the feel of the Mattin was more like a medieval Italian hill town. Within, daylight showered art studios and public spaces.
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