Steven Holl (Bremerton, Washington, United States; 1947) graduated in architecture from the University of Washington in Seattle before completing his studies in Rome and at the Architectural Association in London. He then settled in New York, and began making a name for himself with his work on family housing and his small- and large-scale experimental designs. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1981.
He currently runs two studios, in New York and Beijing, and has worked in North America, Europe and Asia, especially Japan. Among his most celebrated projects, which coincide in their respect for the building’s historical and cultural context, are the Simmons Hall students’ residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas, the Chapel of St. Ignatius in Seattle University and his addition to the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan (all in the United States), the Linked Hybrid complex in Beijing (China), the Cité de l’Océan et du Surf in Biarritz (France) and the Reid Building at the Glasgow Art School (United Kingdom).
Holl has received some of architecture’s most prestigious prizes, including the RIBA Jencks Award (2010), the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (2012) and the Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award for Architecture (2014). He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Seattle and Moholy-Nagy in Budapest (Hungary).
“I am extremely proud that an award devoted to the arts has gone to an architect,” said Steven Holl on learning he had won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Arts category.
“The unity of the arts means a lot to me,” said an enthused Holl. “These awards connect them, and I see architecture as the art that most succinctly merges all the rest.” The Frontiers of Knowledge award recognizes outstanding contributions in four of the artistic disciplines that do most to shape the identity of a given era: architecture, music, painting and sculpture.
Although his architecture degree is from the University of Washington, it was in the city of Rome, where he headed after graduation, that he earned his reputation as a humanist in the renaissance tradition. Holl likes to teach by example and in his classes at Columbia University, where he has been lecturing since 1981, encourages his architecture students to experiment with other arts. Indeed the label that will stay with Holl is probably “the most European of American architects” rather like the modern-day equivalent of a Renaissance prince.
Along with this classical heritage comes another quality – a sense of balance. The Frontiers jury, in its citation, praises the balance achieved in his work, which promotes social and cultural fundamentals while remaining determinedly in the architectural vanguard. But this is a vanguardism rooted in reality. Holl can respond to the social and environmental concerns that inform any commission without letting it cramp his free flowing artistic style, like the accomplished watercolorist he is (another symptom of the classical all-rounder). In fact he uses watercolors to make the first sketches of his projects. One such set of sketches are those for the extension to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.
White buildings, containers of light, that not only enlarge the capacity of the original building with its stark, neoclassical style, but also cast it within a new landscape. Visitors find themselves on a vast and exciting stage that nonetheless scrupulously respects the function and placement of the existing museum. The architectural solution takes the form of five freestanding structures: light-filled lenses that dialogue with the central stone block.
However, “balanced” for Holl does not mean dully hieratic. One of his most celebrated works (so, inevitably, among the most controversial) is the students’ residence known as Simmons Hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The building is a large block that extends horizontally, yet with a certain sponge-like porosity which lets in the surrounding landscape. A turn of the screw that jars this stolid structure into sudden movement.
Indeed movement lies at the heart of the architect’s conception of design: “We want these halls to be silent, but not static. It is their irregularity that sets each one apart from the others.” This is Holl talking about what is probably his best loved work in Europe, the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki – and in the process showing his respect for the arts (again in the plural) which the building houses: “In planning it we tried to anticipate the needs of a range of artists, including some whose works need a silent atmosphere to reach their full expressive intensity,” he explained at the presentation of his project.
Unlike so many other architects, Steven Holl does not stand out for his masterly (or repeated) use of a given material, a preference (or obsession) for a single geometric form or a particular constructive style (for which read, serial production). His commissions range from small residential buildings up to large-scale urban projects.
To find a distinguishing trait in Holl’s output we need to venture into more abstract terrain, to forgo concrete descriptions and focus instead on his language, which, according to the jury, “has successfully withstood the passage of time, immune to formal or stylistic compromise.” And if classical also means worthy of imitation, of lasting influence, then perhaps this citation is further proof of why the adjective sits so well with Holl.
The architect’s defense of humanistic values is probably best expressed in the Linked Hybrid complex, in Beijing. A city within a city located in the heart of the eastern megalopolis; a classical agora in the western tradition adjoining Beijing’s ancient walls. Linked Hybrid is a residential complex of 700 homes which plays with every possibility of interconnection between its buildings and component planes –here the comparison that comes to mind is Matisse and his hand-clasped dancers. The circle they form does not shut out the exterior but lets it permeate the inner space.
Setting is everything in Holl’s work. Whether it be the dense urban landscape of Beijing or the inhospitable New Mexico desert, where Turbulence House, his little guesthouse, stands firm on its mesa, buffeted by the winds. The question here was how the building could be made harmonious with its surroundings yet at the same time fulfill its primary function of habitability. Holl’s solution was to create a sculptural structure with a tunnel-like breezeway so the winds pass through leaving its residents undisturbed.
One of the hallmarks of his architecture is precisely “this very direct relationship with the location, the way it caters to the demands and characteristics of each commission,” in the words of Spanish architect and jury member Antón García Abril. Environmental demands included, of course. “We work shoulder to shoulder with engineers who provide us with a comprehensive study of the site we are building on,” remarks the Frontiers laureate.
On the subject of the world financial crisis and its supposed origins in the real estate sector, Holl is surprisingly serene: “I think the crisis will bring a closer relationship between architecture and the environment, which will be a positive outcome, I believe, whatever economic problems may arise.” For him, ecology and the environment hold the key to one of the main challenges facing the architect of the 21st century: how to recover and improve the quality of public space. And as to that other challenge, the recovery of humanistic and spiritual values, he has no doubts about the way forward: architecture, “along with the other fine arts” must strive to “move and inspire us, like music.”
