Steven Holl: Architect

by Kenneth Frampton

This is a monograph devoted to one of the leading architects on the contemporary scene. Born at Bremerton in the state of Washington in 1947, Steven Holl studied architecture at the University of Washington at Seattle, and later on in Rome and at the Architectural Association in London. He has worked both in the United States and in Europe, and a great deal in the East, especially in Japan. His most important designs, notable for their respect for the cultural and historical environment they are set in, include the Makuhari residential complex in Japan, the St Ignatius chapel of the University of Seattle, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and the extension of the Cranbrook Institute of Science at Bloomfield Hills in Michigan. Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture of Columbia University, Holl has taught courses and lectures in other institutions around the United States and abroad. He has won many awards, including the Arnold W. Brunner prize for architecture in 1990 and the Alvar Aalto medal in 1998.

Genres: Architecture

416 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

Kenneth Frampton is a British architect, critic, historian and the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York.

Frampton studied architecture at Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Subsequently he worked in Israel, with Middlesex County Council and Douglas Stephen and Partners (1961–66), during which time he was also a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art (1961–64), tutor at the Architectural Association (1961–63) and Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design (AD) (1962–65).
Frampton has also taught at Princeton University (1966–71) and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, (1980). He has been a member of the faculty at Columbia University since 1972, and that same year he became a fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York -- (whose members also included Peter Eisenman, Manfredo Tafuri and Rem Koolhaas) -- and a co-founding editor of its magazine Oppositions.
Frampton is a permanent resident of the USA.
Frampton is well known for his writing on twentieth-century architecture. His books include Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980; revised 1985, 1992 and 2007) and Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995). Frampton achieved great prominence (and influence) in architectural education with his essay "Towards a Critical Regionalism" (1983) — though the term had already been coined by Alexander Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre. Also, Frampton's essay was included in a book The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, though Frampton is critical of postmodernism. Frampton's own position attempts to defend a version of modernism that looks to either critical regionalism or a 'momentary' understanding of the autonomy of architectural practice in terms of its own concerns with form and tectonics which cannot be reduced to economics (whilst conversely retaining a Leftist viewpoint regarding the social responsibility of architecture).
In 2002 a collection of Frampton's writings over a period of 35 years was collated and published under the title Labour, Work and Architecture.