Steven Holl, an architect, theorist, and teacher, has been considered a leader in late 20th- and early 21st-century architecture. His work is distinguished by a subtle abstract rhythm that defies both modernist and postmodernist sensibilities. Known for developing diagrams that define the design of each project, the essence of Holl’s work lies in the quality of space, light, materiality, and ultimately, the overall guiding concept. As the founder and principal of Steven Holl Architects, he has maintained an office in New York City since 1976, and his projects have been built worldwide.

Holl’s significant projects include the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (1998) in Helsinki, Finland; Knut Hamsun Museum (1999) in Hamarey, Norway; and the Bellevue Art Museum (1999) in Bellevue, Washington. Some of his residential work includes the Pool House and Sculpture Garden (1981) in Scarsdale, New York; Stretto House (1992) in Dallas, Texas; the “Y” House (1998) in Catskill Mountains, New York, and the Berkowitz-Odgis House (1988) on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. He has gained recognition through large residential projects, including the Seaside Hybrid Housing project (1987) in Seaside, Florida; Makahari Housing (1996) in Chiba, Japan; and Void Space/Hinged Space Housing (1991) in Fukuoka, Japan. Other works include the Sarphatistraat Offices (2000) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; the Chapel of St. Ignatius (1999) in Seattle, Washington; and the addition to Cranbrook Institute of Science (1998) in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, as well as a collaborative project for a Storefront for Art and Architecture (1993) with conceptual artist Vito Acconci in New York City.

Encouraged by an influential professor at the University of Washington, Hermann Pundt, Holl left Seattle and studied abroad during his junior year in Rome, Italy. It was here that Holl made frequent visits to the Pantheon to study structure and light and was exposed to the urban layers of the city, both of which had a great influence on his later perceptions in architecture and theory. In 1976, he did postgraduate work at the Architectural Association in London, where he came in contact with architects such as Rem Koolhaas, Leon Krier, Charles Jenks, Elia Zenghelis, Zaha Hadid, and Bernard Tschumi. After traveling through Europe for several months, Holl returned to San Francisco and soon after moved to New York, where he established his office in 1976.

Nearly bypassing architecture for a career in painting in the 1970s, Holl still relies on two-dimensional media as a means to develop studies and diagrams that facilitate his search for the “elusive essence of architecture.” Holl’s buildings are described as aural as well as visual, and he has earned a reputation for creating designs that evolve from conceptual meaning rather than from a specific stylistic form. Although it is hard to distinguish one architect or style as a guiding influence, much of his work shows reflections of Louis Kahn, for whom Holl had been planning on working until the architect’s sudden death, and Le Corbusier, both for their attention to structure and sense of materiality.

Although projects such as the D.E. Shaw and Co. offices (New York City, 1992), the Cohen Apartment (New York City, 1983), and the Void Space/Hinged Space Housing (1991), reflect early modernist qualities of clean lines and reductive materials such as concrete, glass, and metal, Holl experiments with a new three-dimensional language of planes and volumes that moves beyond the pure modernist influence. In the Stretto House, inspired by the overlapping stretto between heavy percussion and light strings in a musical piece by Béla Bartok, light metal roofs float between four heavy face-ground concrete pavilions, echoing the musical score and illustrating a shift between Holl’s early and later work.

In the mid-1990s, Holl’s work shifted from the rectilinear to abstract, curvilinear forms with strong expressions of light and color. In the St. Ignatius Chapel, Holl constructed a precast-concrete box of colored tilt-up slabs that framed six skylights, each reflecting the incoming light off colored interior baffles. At the Museum for Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the patinated zinc, hand-polished aluminum, and sand-blasted glass exterior intertwines the building’s mass with the geometry of the city and landscape.

Kathryn Rogers Merlino

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.