Steven Holl

Steven Holl
Architect Steven Holl on the second-floor balcony in 2008
Born	(1947-12-09) December 9, 1947 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)
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 an American architect and watercolorist, best known for his designs for the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri,^[1] and the 2009 Linked Hybrid mixed-use complex in Beijing, China.^[1]

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 translation of "chiasma."

St. Ignatius Chapel had been built from 1994 to 1997 in Seattle University for the Jesuit chapel. Holl addressed the need for common 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. ^[2]The plan of the chapel won a design award in the American Institute of Architects of New York. Steven Holl has designed the Chapel to symbolize "seven bottles of light in a stone box," which translates into seven volumes of different light. Each volume represents a different part of Jesuit Catholic worship. Moreover, each bottles has different colored glass so that various part of the building are marked out by colored light. Light sources are tinted in this way but also indirect reflection from painted surfaces and each is arranged with its complement color.

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

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. Steven Holl leads his 40-person office with partners Chris McVoy and Noah Yaffe. 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.

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.^[3] 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.,^[4] and Holl was named the 2012 AIA Gold Medal winner.^[5] In 2014, Holl was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Architecture.^[6]

Notable works

Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington

Pratt Institute Higgins Hall, Brooklyn, NY

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

• Hybrid Building, Seaside, Florida (1984–88)
• Berlin AGB Library, Berlin, Germany (entry for a competition in 1988)
• Void Space Housing, Nexus World, Fukuoka, Japan (1989–91)
• Stretto House, Dallas, Texas (1989–92)
• Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York City (1992–93)
• Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University, Seattle, Washington (1994–97)
• Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1993–98)^[7]
• Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (1993–98)
• Sarphatistraat Offices, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1996–2000)
• Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington (2001)
• Ralph Rapson Hall, College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (2002)
• Pratt Institute Higgins Hall Insertion, Brooklyn, NY (1997–2005)
• Lake Whitney Water Purification Facility and Park, Connecticut (1998-2005)
• Turbulence House, New Mexico (2001–05)
• Planar House, Paradise Valley, Arizona (2002–05)
• University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa (1999–2006)
• Residence of the Ambassador of Switzerland, Washington, DC (2006)
• Bloch Building expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri (1999–2007)
• Linked Hybrid, Beijing (2003–09)
• Knut Hamsun Centre (Hamsunsenteret), Nordland, Norway (1994–2009)
• Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark (2005–09)
• Horizontal Skyscraper - Vanke Center, Shenzhen, China (2006–09)
• Cite de l'Ocean et du Surf, Biarritz, France (2005–11), in collaboration with Solange Fabiao
• Daeyang Gallery and House, Seoul, South Korea (2008–12)
• PhD Building, National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia (2012)
• Sliced Porosity Block - CapitaLand Raffles City Chengdu, Chengdu, China (2007–12)
• Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2003–13)
• Campbell Sports Center at Columbia University, New York, NY (2008–13)
• John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts addition (2013)^[8][9]
• Seona Reid Building, Glasgow School of Art (2009–14)
• Editions de Parfums, Frederic Malle, New York, NY (2013-2014)

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 (2012)
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2012)

Selected publications

Along with Pallasmaa and Alberto Perez-Gomez, Holl wrote essays for a 1994 special issue of the Japanese architectural journal A+U 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

Notes

References

• 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
• Steven Holl, Projects
• The Kennedy Center Expansion Project