December 9, 1947 - Steven Holl

Master of space, material and natural light - Stephen Holl

Steven Holl  

He is a New York-based American architect and watercolorist. Holl graduated from the University of Washington and pursued architecture studies in Rome in 1970, but later moved to New York. For 10 years Holl slept in his office on a plywood shelf above the entry and showered at the nearby YMCA.

University of Iowa Visual Arts Building

Holls architectural philosophy is centred on human experience, maternity and engagement with the site and context. His inspiration comes from phenomological ideas of philosopher Maurice Marleau-Ponty and architect theorist Juhani Pallasmaa.

  

Horizontal Skyscraper, Shenzhen, China

His later work concentrated on urban-scale mixed residential and commercial projects in China, notably the Linked Hybrid, a building complex containing apartments, hotels, schools, and restaurants in Beijing, and the Vanke Centre, a “horizontal skyscraper” in Shenzhen.

  

Linked Hybrid, Beijin, China

Holl’s work includes large buildings around the world, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the Nanjing Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, China, an addition to and renovation of the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek (American Memorial Library) in Berlin, and an annex to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.