Steven Holl: Architecture Spoken

by Steven Holl, Lebbeus Woods (Introduction)

Named America's Best Architect by Time magazine in 2001 "for buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye," Steven Holl is known for an experimental approach to architecture that is at once romantic, humanistic, and resplendently modern. Ranging across the globe, his multifarious body of work-including the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland; Beijing Looped Hybrid, an apartment complex in China; and the highly anticipated Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City-demonstrates a profound appreciation for the subtleties, power, and possibilities implicit in the materials of his light, space, form; concrete, steel, glass. Marked by what has been called a "unique husbandry of space" (Time), Holl's work invites the participation of the observer in a joyful celebration of light and shadow, a festival in which movement becomes integral, where clouds passing through the night sky interact with shifting planes of heaven-bound glass. Steven Arch

Genres: Architecture

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2007

About the author

Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri,[1] and the praised 2009 Linked Hybrid mixed-use complex in Beijing, China.

Holl graduated from the University of Washington and pursued architecture studies in Rome in 1970. In 1976, he attended graduate school at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and established his offices New York City. Holl has taught at Columbia University since 1981.

Holl's architecture has undergone a shift in emphasis, from his earlier concern with typology to his current concern with a phenomenological approach; that is, with a concern for man's existentialist, bodily engagement with his surroundings. The shift came about partly due to his interest in the writings of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and architect-theorist Juhani Pallasmaa.

Reviews

[Shraddha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice images but much of the same work we have seen in his previous books.