Steven Holl

Steven Holl
Steven Holl in Helsinki, Finland in 2008
Born	(1947-12-09) December 9, 1947 (age 73) Bremerton, Washington
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Washington Architectural Association School of Architecture
Occupation	Architect
Awards	Alvar Aalto Medal (1998) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2008) AIA Gold Medal (2012) Praemium Imperiale (2014) The Daylight and Building Component Award (2016)
Practice	Steven Holl Architects
Buildings	Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Linked Hybrid, Beijing, Knut Hamsun Center, Hamarøy, Norway

Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is a New York-based American architect and watercolorist. Among his most recognized works are the 2019 REACH expansion of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,^[1] the 2019 Hunters Point Library in Queens, New York,^[2] the 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri,^[3] and the 2009 Linked Hybrid mixed-use complex in Beijing, China.^[3]

Career[]

Steven Holl's design for Simmons Hall of MIT won the Harleston Parker Medal in 2004.

Bloch Addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Family and education[]

Holl was born on December 9, 1947, and grew up in Bremerton and Manchester, Washington.^[4] Holl graduated from the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Development[]

Holl's architecture has undergone a shift in emphasis, from his earlier concern with Typology to his more modern style of phenomenology. He has been inspired and influenced by philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and architect-theorist Juhani Pallasmaa.

Recognition and awards[]

In 1998, Holl was awarded the prestigious Alvar Aalto Medal. In 2000, Holl was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In July 2001, Time named Holl America's Best Architect, for "buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye." Other awards and distinctions include the best architectural design in New York for The Pace Collection showroom in 1986 from the American Institute of Architects, the New York American Institute of Architects Medal of Honor (1997), the French Grande Médaille d’Or (2001), the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture (2002), Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (2003), the Arnold W. Brunner Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2008 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Arts category.^[5] In 2007, Steven Holl Architects received the AIA Institute Honor Award and the AIA New York Chapter Architecture Merit Award for Art Building West for the School of Art and Art History (University of Iowa, Iowa City). The Higgins Hall Insertion at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, New York) and the New Residence at the Swiss Embassy both received the AIA New York Chapter Architecture Honor Award in 2007. In 2010, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, (Herning, Denmark) was awarded the RIBA International Award. The Horizontal Skyscraper-Vanke Center received the 2011 AIA Institute National Honor Award, as well as the AIA NY Honor Award. In 2011, he was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.,^[6] and Holl was named the 2012 AIA Gold Medal winner.^[7] In 2014, Holl was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Architecture.^[8] In 2016, Holl

Teaching[]

Holl is a tenured professor at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1981^[9] with Dimitra Tsachrelia.^[10] He frequently teaches on the relationship between music and architecture.^[11]

'T' Space[]

In 2010, Holl founded 'T' Space, a multidisciplinary arts organization in Rhinebeck, New York. The core aim of 'T' Space is to create educational fusions of art, architecture, music, and poetry of the 21st century. The organization operates a summer exhibition series and an emerging architects summer residency in pursuit of their mission.^[12]

The 'T' Space Synthesis of the Arts Series explores the intersection of art, architecture, and ecology through 2 to 3 exhibitions of work by emerging and established artists and architects. As of its 2019 season, 'T' Space has exhibited architects José Oubrerie, Tatiana Bilbao, and Neil Denari,^[13] as well as artists such as Ai Weiwei, Pat Steir, and Brice Marden.^[14]

In 2017, 'T' Space began offering a summertime residency program for young architects and artists.^[15] Program participants design purpose-built architecture for rural communities, with curriculum emphasizing the ecological outcomes of design. During project development, the residents participate in pin-ups, field trips, and a public lecture series, from architects including Christian Wassmann, Christoph Kumpusch, Tamas Nagy, and Holl himself.^[16][17]

In addition to its arts and educational programming, 'T' Space maintains a publication program and a 30-acre nature reserve with outdoor installations of art and architecture. In 2019, construction was completed on 'T' Space's architectural archive and research library, which will come to house Holl's work as a watercolorist, as well as models, drawings and other architectural materials developed in Holl's 40-plus years as principal of Steven Holl Architects.^[18]

Works[]

Early works[]

Kiasma, Helsinki, 1993-1998

Holl won first prize in the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek International Library Design Competition in 1988, an expansion and renovation of the American Memorial Library in Berlin. In February, 1989 Holl's work was exhibited in a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. MoMA later purchased twenty-five works by Holl for the museum's permanent collection. In the 1992 competition for a new contemporary arts museum in Helsinki, Finland, Holl's entry, entitled "Chiasma," won first prize out of more than five hundred international entries. The museum opened to the public in 1998, having permanently adopted the name "Kiasma," the Finnish transliteration of "chiasma."

In designing the Chapel of St. Ignatius (built 1994-1997), Jesuit chapel at Seattle University, Holl addressed the campus's need for green space by siting the chapel in the center of a former street and elongating the building plan. New green campus quadrangles were formed to the north, west, and south, and a future quadrangle is planned to the east.^[19] The plan of the chapel won a design award in the American Institute of Architects of New York. Holl designed the Chapel around St. Ignatius's vision of the inner spiritual life, "seven bottles of light in a stone box", by creating seven volumes of different light. Each volume represents a different part of Jesuit Catholic worship, and has differently colored glass so that various parts of the building are marked out by colored light. Light sources are tinted both in this way and by indirect reflection from painted surfaces, and each is paired with its complementary color.

Significant works[]

Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington

Bloch Building expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri

Clara Weatherall, Laura Lee, Steven Holl, Pierre Goad, Daisy Goodwin and Alwen Williams celebrate the start of construction of new Maggie's Barts, St Bartholomew's Hospital building. © Thomas Alexander Photography on behalf of Maggie's

Competition selections[]

• 'Sail Hybrid' casino development, Knokke-Heist, Belgium (2005)
• 'Horizontal Skyscraper', Vanke Center, Shenzhen, China (2006)
• 'Meander', Taivallahti Residential Area, Helsinki, Finland (2006)
• LM Project, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008)
• Hangzhou Music Museum, Hangzhou, China (2009)
• 'Shan-Shui' masterplan, Hangzhou, China (2010)
• Virginia Commonwealth University's Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond, Virginia (2018)
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2020) (in construction)

Selected publications[]

Along with Pallasmaa and Alberto Perez-Gomez, Holl wrote essays for a 1994 special issue of the Japanese architectural journal under the title "Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture." The publication was reissued as a book in 2006.

• Pamphlet Architecture 5: Alphabetical City, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1980.
• Pamphlet Architecture 9: Rural and Urban House Types, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1983.
• Anchoring, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1989.
• Steven Holl: Educating our Perception, in “Magic Materials II”, Daidalos, August 1995.
• Intertwining, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996.
• Pamphlet Architecture 13: Edge of a City, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996.
• Pamphlet Architecture 1-10, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998.
• The Chapel of St. Ignatius, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1999.
• Parallax, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000
• Steven Holl: Architecture Spoken, Rizzoli, 2007
• House - Black Swan Theory, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007
• Urbanisms: Working with Doubt, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009
• Pamphlet Architecture 11-20, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2011.
• Pamphlet Architecture 31: New Haiti Villages, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2011.
• Steven Holl: Horizontal Skyscraper, William Stout Publishers, 2011
• Steven Holl: Scale, Lars Mueller Publishers, 2012
• Steven Holl: Color, Light and Time, with essays by Sanford Kwinter and Jordi Safont-Tria, Lars Mueller Publishers, 2012
• Urban Hopes: Made in China by Steven Holl, edited by Christoph Kumpusch, Lars Mueller Publishers, 2013
• Steven Holl, Robert McCarter, Phaidon, New York, 2015
• Steven Holl Seven Houses, Rizzoli, New York, 2018
• Compression, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2019.
• Steven Holl: Inspiration and Process in Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2020.

Notes[]

References[]

• Fred Rush, On Architecture, Routledge, London and New York, 2007.
• Scott Drake, “The Chiasm and the experience of space”, JAE, Nov. 2005, vol.59, iss. 2, 53–59.
• Alberto Perez-Gomez, Juhani Pallasmaa, Steven Holl, Questions of Perception. Phenomenology of Architecture, William K. Stout Pub., San Francisco, 2006 (2nd edition).
• Alberto Perez-Gomez, “The architecture of Steven Holl: In search of a poetry of specifics”, El Croquis 93, 1999.
• Philip Jodidio, Architecture Now!, Icons, Taschen, New York, 2002.
• Gareth Griffiths, "Steven Holl and His Critics", Ptah, Helsinki, 2006.
• Nancy Marmer, "Holl's Kiasma Debuts in Helsinki," Art in America, October 1998, p. 35.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Steven Holl.

• Steven Holl Architects website
• The Stretto House by Steven Holl (with drawings)
• The Chapel of St. Ignatius
• Photographs of Architect Steven Holl Designed Modern Home in Dallas, Texas
• Photos of the Nelson Atkins Museum Bloch Building
• The Kennedy Center Expansion Project