The Japan Art Association (JAA) has named American architect Steven Holl as the 2014 Praemium Imperiale Laureate for Architecture. Holl will be honored at a ceremony in Tokyo on October 15th. The jury's citation states that Holl's "works are internationally highly regarded, primarily as a result of his philosophy regarding the unification of the “experience” of space, as depicted by color and light, with the history and culture of each site of construction."
To determine the finalists, the five jury members - Francisco Liernur, Sarah Whiting, Wiel Arets, Dominique Perrault, and Kenneth Frampton - spent the last twelve days visiting projects, speaking with the architects, users and owners of the spaces, and entering into intense debate among each other.
As jury member Dominique Perrault noted, “There’s a lot of means by which to evaluate projects - models, drawings, images - but we took all opportunities to test the quality of the architecture. In the end, only by visiting can you sense the ‘touch of god’ - the presence of the building itself in the context.”
The resulting finalists show tremendous variety - in terms of scale, place, typology, program, materials, etc. - making the task of choosing a winner all the more challenging. See all seven finalists, as well as a video of Kenneth Frampton discussing the selection process, after the break.
Wiel Arets, Dean of the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Dirk Denison, Director of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), have announced the inaugural MCHAP shortlist – 36 “Outstanding Projects” selected from the 225 MCHAP nominees.
“The rich diversity of these built works is a testament to the creative energy at work in the Americas today,” said Arets. “When viewed alongside the innovative work by the MCHAP.emerge finalists and winner, Poli House by Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen which we honored in May, we see the evolution of a distinctly American conversation about creating livable space.” See all 36 winners after the break.
Steven Holl's design for Maggie's Centre St Bart's. Image Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects
Michael Hopkins has added his thoughts to the row over Steven Holl's plans for the New Maggie's Centre at St Bart's Hospital in London, with a letter to London City Planners saying that the design is in the wrong place and would ruin the setting of the 18th Century Great Hall. Hopkins, whose rival scheme received planning permission last month, says that the construction of the Maggie's Centre represented a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to restore the great hall to its original design which was only met by his plans to build the Maggie's centre in a different part of the St Bart's site.
A rival to Steven Holl Architects' design for the Maggie's Centre at St Barts Hospital in London has received planning permission. The alternative scheme was commissioned by a group called “Friends of the Great Hall and Archive”, who believe the proposal by Steven Holl Architects would threaten the 18th century, Grade I* listed Great Hall. The newly approved scheme, designed by Hopkins Architects, proposes a different site for the new cancer care centre.
After their initial scheme was rejected, Steven Holl Architects' revised design was submitted for planning approval last week, with a decision expected in the summer.
UPDATE: Three teams have been selected to move forward in the competition: Allied Works Architecture (Portland/New York), Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York), and the team of Patkau Architects (Vancouver, B.C.) and Fong & Chan Architects (San Francisco). The finalists will present their proposals April 3 and a winner will be announced shortly after.
Seven high-profile teams have been shortlisted to design a new research, museum and performing arts center for the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Planned for a stunning site overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the $32 million project is intended to be “an innovative educational experiment” that will “blur the lines between disciplines to beautiful effect.” The shortlist ranges from Steven Holl to Tod Williams Billies Tsien. The complete list of competitors, after the break.
Steven Holl Architects has shared with us an impressive gallery of images of their recent project, Nanjing’s Sifang Art Museum. Rising above the lush landscape of the Pearl Spring, the new museum was designed as a physical manifestation of the parallel perspective, a technique prevalent in early Chinese paintings. From a subtly distorted courtyard with no vanishing points to an upper level gallery with calculated views and pristine light, the experience through the Sifang Art Museum is unlike any other.
Steven Holl has, again, teamed up with Spirit of Space to produce two short films on the recently completed Sifang Art Museum. In the first video (above) Holl explains the project’s inspiration - the mysteries of parallel perspective seen in early Chinese paintings - and how the design subtly distorts any concept of a vanishing point at the ground level yet contrasts this notion in the upper galleries by framing the distant view of Nanjing. In the second video (after the break), Spirit of Space allows you to experience this space by revealing it from all perspectives and scales.
In this article originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Urban Hopes, Urban Dreams", Samuel Medina reviews a new book on the work of Steven Holl in China. Focusing on five major projects, the book places Holl's work in the wider context of his urbanistic influences - including ideas from his own early paper architecture that are just now resurfacing.
Steven Holl is the rare architect whose concepts are equally known as his buildings. Chalk that up to Holl’s prolific output, in both buildings and monographs, and his knack for branding his ideas. Urban Hopes: Made in China (Lars Müller, 2014), a condensed reader on Holl's latest work in China, is the latest in a stream of small books that have continually repackaged the architect's growing body of work.
Anchoring and Intertwining appeared in 1996 and expounded on architectural themes and spatial notions only partially evinced by his work up until that time. In both, the buildings were few and far between, scattered between pages imprinted with “paper architecture,” the primary outlet for Holl’s creative energies in the prior decades since his move to New York in 1976. These and more titles were followed up by Parallax in 2000, a blend of philosophical, scientific, and poetic references that invest the architecture with the aura of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Holl’s idea of “porosity” made its debut here, if prematurely, where it was applied rather literally to Simmons Hall at MIT and its sponge-like facade. It wasn’t until a few years later, when the architect first got his feet wet in China, that the concept would be baptised as a core tenet of 21st-century urban design. 2009’s Urbanisms advances as much, while further recapitulating the big ideas of the previous book installments.
Read on after the break for the review of Urban Hopes
To celebrate the launch of ArchDaily Materials, our new product catalog, we've rounded up 10 awesome projects from around the world that were inspired by one material: glass. Check out the projects after the break...
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles presents City in a City: a Decade of Urban Thinking by Steven Holl Architects. The exhibition opens with a reception and panel discussion on Wednesday, January 29, and Steven Holl will give a public lecture on Thursday evening, January 30. The exhibition runs through March 9, 2014.
This new exhibition of the work of Steven Holl Architects presents six urban projects in China, designed with particular focus on shaping public space, natural green strategies, hybrid programs, structure and light. Included are three built works: Linked Hybrid in Beijing, Vanke Center/Horizontal Skyscraper in Shenzhen, and Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, as well as three yet to be built works: Porosity Plan in Dongguan, Eco-City in Tianjin, and the Qingdao Culture and Art Center. Concept watercolors of each building will be on view along with project models and construction documents. Also featured are short videos of the built works. The exhibition is arranged chronologically from 2002-2013 through the rooms of the Schindler House, making physical the journey through a decade of thinking.
Legendary American architect Steven Holl has collaborated again with Spirit of Space to produce two short videos on the recently completed Campbell Sports Center in New York City. While always compelling to hear an architect discuss a project, these videos integrate the architect's narration with different dynamic shots of the building's detail and context, thus truly immersing the viewer in the project.
The first video (above) features Steven Holl and senior partner Chris McVoy explaining the project's inspiration, design concept and program; simultaneously, the filmmakers take us into the space and show how the new athletic facility is being used by the student athletes. The second, shorter, video (after the break) shows the building in the city, revealing the fascinatingly complex relationship between the passing subway cars, the field hockey players, the movement of shadows and the building itself.
In this fascinating conversation, critic and theorist Jeffrey Kipnis and architect Steven Holl discuss modern architecture, from competitions to cantilevers, courtesy of our friends at 32BNY.
Designed as an experiment on “the architectonics of music,” the basic geometry of the Daeyang Gallery and House was inspired by Istvan Anhalt’s 1967 Symphony of Modules - a uniquely transcribed sheet of music found in John Cage’s contemporary music compendium, Notations. Reminiscent of the “blocky and shard-like shapes” of Anhalt’s sketch, Holl’s design features three copper-clad pavilions punctured by a symphony of carefully placed, rectangular skylights that animate the interior with “bars of light”. As Kennicott describes, Holl uses music as a “powerful metaphor for the dynamic unfolding of experience” (captured in this film by Spirit of Space).
Read Kennicott’sMusic Holl: A Copper Clad Pavilion in its entirety here on Dwell. Continue after the break to compare Steven Holl's sketch above with Anhalt’s Symphony of Modules.
As part of INTERNI’s Hybrid Architecture Exhibition event, Steven Holl Architects will be opening their 'INVERSION' installation tomorrow, April 9th, in Milan. In addition, Steven Holl will deliver a lecture in the Aula Magna of the Università degli Studi di Milano at 10am. Shown in the Cortile 700 of the Università degli Studi di Milano, the installation features six void-cut, 21 million year old limestone blocks, which frame a sheet of water. The process, beginning with a 5”x7” watercolor sketch in New York City, which is transformed into a 3D file and then sent to Lecce, required no working drawings. More information on their installation after the break.
On April 9, Steven Holl Architects is preparing to open the installation INVERSION, presented as part of Interni's Hybrid Architecture exhibition event organized on occasion of the FuoriSalone 2013, during Design Week in Milan.
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.
