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Earlier this month, Steven Holl Architects designed and created their project Obolin, a sculpture made locally from a single panel of cross-laminated timber, or CLT. It was made for and is now exhibited in the Art Omi Sculpture and Architecture Park, an art center that seeks to explore the intersection of architecture and art through the production of pavilions, installations, landscape interventions, and built environments designed by architects.
Steven Holl Architects and McCarthy Building Companies Inc. have celebrated the topping out of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas’ oldest museum. The 243,600-square foot building will house modern and contemporary art once completed in 2020.
Steven Holl Architects has won a competition for the design of the headquarters for iCarbonX, a genome machine intelligence company in Shenzhen. The scheme comprises of two towers, with the first tower “Body A” forming a residential component, and the second tower, “Body B” containing offices, labs, and public reception spaces. The form of the towers is inspired by the study of genes and DNA.
Steven Holl Architects has been commissioned to design a new 26,000-square-meter mixed-use building for CIFI Group in Beijing. The retail/office scheme will be Holl’s second building in Beijing, located in the Fengtai area of the city. The design for the hybrid building is centered on five principles: light, structure, urban porosity, open offices, and ecology.
With more digital tools available to architects than ever before, one has to ask themselves why the sketch remains one of the most valued pieces of representation in the architectural field. Renderings, three-dimensional models, and virtual reality are powerful and efficient innovations that allow architects to express their ideas and designs. However, in our fast-paced world where messages are sent across the globe in a matter of seconds, it seems that nothing compares to the hand-drawn, imperfection of a sketch.
While some sketches are chaotic scribbles developed during the design stage, others are true works of art, aimed to convince clients. Below, we compiled a list of 100 sketches made by architects from around the world to inspire you.
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) has selected Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with Rüssli Architekten as the winners of an international competition for the design of their new Geneva Operational Center, beating out proposals from Pool Architekten & Mak Architecture, Sauerbruch Hutton, Emilio Tuñon Arquitectos & Ruckstuhl Architekten, Blue Architects, and Consortium Sou Foujimoto with The New Talent Workshop.
Clad in an innovative colored photovoltaic glass facade system, the energy-efficient building will provide flexible work and social spaces for more than 250 employees.
Steven Holl Architects' new Visual Arts Building at the University of Iowa, completed last fall, has already begun to make its impact on the school's social environment, pairing Art Building West (also designed by SHA, in 2006) to create a revitalized Arts Quad with public spaces the whole campus can enjoy.
These two videos give an in-depth look at the new building. In the video above, Steven Holl and Senior Partner Chris McVoy tour the school while providing commentary about their design process, as well as the history of the site and the building's construction. Also check out the video below to see all the spaces in action.
Steven Holl Architects has released updates on four of its latest projects slated for completion this year. The projects, located in the United States and the United Kingdom, include two university arts buildings, a community library, and a cancer support center.
We are very excited about the intensity of the architecture for an unprecedented four Steven Holl Architects’ projects opening in 2017, said Steven Holl. Each ones serves as an inspiring ‘social condenser’ for their community.
Steven Holl Architects has revealed plans for a new Cultural and Health Center to be located in Shanghai’s Fengxian District. Set into the public landscape, the two buildings will serve as a “social condenser” aimed at integrating the community of surrounding housing blocks together into a park along the Punan Canal.
Architecture, I believe, changes your life. It changes the way you can live life – the way you can see, the way you can feel. Like Winston Churchill says, ‘First we shape our buildings, and then they shape us.’ I think this house has that shaping ability.
In this video by directors Spirit of Space, architects Steven Holl & Dimitra Tsachrelia explain the core concepts and exploratory mission driving the architecture of the firm’s recently completed Ex of IN House. Watch as the architects lead you through the home's unique layout and construction, describing how the house “explores a language of space, aimed at inner spatial energy strongly bound to the ecology of the place - questioning current clichés of architectural language and commercial practice.”
Steven Holl Architects has unveiled their design for a new public library and museum in a developing area of Shenzhen, China. With the goal of creating a public space with two buildings connected below the plaza level, the massing concept is based on a three-part removal. While the design did win the most votes from the jury in the overall competition, city officials chose a different scheme to continue with.
Steven Holl Architects (SHA) is preparing to break ground on a project that is nearly eight years in the making. The ambitious "Copenhagen Gate" development will break ground next year, as Fast Company reports, after being initially held back in 2008. It will feature two asymmetrical towers - Gate L and Gate M - connected by a (terrifying) pedestrian skybridge suspended 213 feet above the harbor.
It is no secret that, in the last 10 years, a majority of the big budget construction projects have been centered in newly emerging world markets like China. But now, the markets may be turning. Steven Holl Architects is a strong example of this trend: with the groundbreaking of the Glassell School of Art in Houston on the 15th, the firm now has 8 projects under construction in the western world - 7 in the United States, and one in the United Kingdom. Owing to the steady strengthening of the US dollar over recent years, clients seem to be investing in high ticket architecture once again. After completing projects abroad such as the Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, and Nanjing’s Sifang Art Museum, Holl will now be working in cities like Richmond, Iowa City, New York and London.
Holl’s recent work also reflects a change in design scale. In projects such as the Linked Hybrid in Beijing and the Vanke Center/Horizontal Skyscraper in Shenzhen, design began at the urban level, resulting in inward-looking superstructures. In the firm’s return to the west, projects are usually designed as an object or extension of an existing environment, such as in their expansion project for the Kennedy Center. The reduced sense of scale is also evident in the square-footage in some of their recent designs, including a residence to be built at under 1000 square feet.
In It’s A Wonderful Life the film’s protagonist George Bailey, facing a crisis of faith, is visited by his guardian angel, and shown an alternate reality where he doesn’t exist. The experience gives meaning to George’s life, showing him his own importance to others. With the increasing scale of design competitions these days, architectural “could-have-beens” are piling up in record numbers, and just as George Bailey's sense of self was restored by seeing his alternate reality, hypothesizing about alternative outcomes in architecture is a chance to reflect on our current architectural moment.
Today marks the one-year-anniversary of the opening of Phase 3 of the High Line. While New Yorkers and urbanists the world over have lauded the success of this industrial-utility-turned-urban-oasis, the park and the slew of other urban improvements it has inspired almost happened very differently. Although we have come to know and love the High Line of Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations, in the original ideas competition four finalists were chosen and the alternatives show stark contrasts in how things might have shaped up.
On this key date for one of the most crucial designs of this generation, we decided to look back at some of the most important competitions of the last century to see how things might have been different.
Steven Holl Architects (SHA) has broken ground on London's newest Maggie's Centre across from the large courtyard of St. Bartholomew’s (Barts) Hospital, the city's oldest hospital. The structure, a branching concrete frame lined with perforated bamboo and matte white glass, was inspired by its historic site, which also neighbors the St. Bartholomew the Great Church. It was envisioned as a "vessel within a vessel within a vessel" embellished with colored glass fragments that recall "neume notation" of Medieval music in the 13th century.
"The word neume originates from the Greek pnevma, which means 'vital force.' It suggests a 'breath of life' that fills oneself with inspiration like a stream of air, the blowing of the wind. The outer glass layer is organized in horizontal bands like a musical staff while the concrete structure branches like the hand," describes SHA.
A video of Steven Holl detailing the center's design, after the break.
Construction has commenced on Steven Holl Architects' Hunters Point Community Library in Queens, New York. Rising along the shoreline on the city's East River near a cluster of newly built high-rise condominiums, the 22,000 square-foot (6,705 meter) library aims to provide a community-centric public space and park to the increasingly privatized Long Island City waterfront.
Steven Holl Architects have been selected to design a new, 60,000 square foot addition to the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. The $100 million project, which will be lead by Steven Holl and senior partner Chris McVoy, is envisioned as three connected pavilions clad in translucent Okalux, glass, and Carrara marble, the material used on the original 1970s building.
Located mostly below grade on the south side of the existing facility, the protruding structures will be embedded within a lush landscape of public gardens. To the west, one pavilion will extend over the Potomac River, offering an outdoor stage at the water’s edge. The expansion will compliment the existing performance center with new classrooms, rehearsal and multipurpose rooms, along with lecture and office space. Both the new and the old will be directly connected underground and through the main plaza. A formal design will be refined and announced in the coming months.
More images and information on the Kennedy Center expansion after the break.
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