This week, for our Proust Questionnaire, we are featuring answers from Archinect favorite Steven Holl, who discusses his love of hybrid buildings, enjoying one's work, and dying at the drawing board.
Who is your favorite living architect?
Dimitra Tsachrelia.
Who is your favorite dead architect?
Le Corbusier.
How would you describe the personality of your practice?
Idea-driven, obsessive, idealistic, committed.
What is the trait that you appreciate most in a building?
Inspiring light and space.
What is the trait that you deplore most in a building?
Kitsch.
What is the trait that you most appreciate in an architect?
Sincerity.
What is the trait that you most deplore in an architect?
Duplicity.
What is your favorite type of project to work on?
Hybrid buildings.
What does architectural happiness mean?
To love your work.
What does architectural misery mean?
Obedient mercenary.
Where would you most like to build (where you haven’t already)?
In future mind.
What is your favorite color?
Cobalt blue.
What is your favorite flower?
Star gazer.
What is your favorite bird?
Red cardinal.
Who is your favorite poet?
Paul Celan.
Who is your favorite artist?
Kazimir Malevich.
When do you lie?
Never.
What talent would you most like to have?
Virtuoso pianist.
What architectural strategies do you most overuse?
Thought.
How would you like to die?
At the drawing board.
1 Featured Comment
I really like it that he chose an associate architect at his own firm as his favourite living architect.
All 4 Comments
what's a hybrid building? excuse my ignorance.
THE HYBRID BUILDING IS A SPECIMEN OF OPPORTUNITY WHICH HAS THE MIXED-USE GENE IN ITS CODE
It turns against the combination of the usual programs and bases its whole raison d’etre on the unexpected mixing of functions. The hybrid is the consequence of a rant against tradition, it sticks two fingers up at typology.
It is an opportunist building which makes the most out of its multiple skills, a key player which revitalizes the urban scene and saves space.
The hybrid scheme proposes cross-fertilization environ- ments, where known genotypes are mixed and new ge- netic alliances are created. This way the personality of the hybrid emerges, as a celebration of complexity.
Hybridization is associated with a certain form of gran- deur, of gigantism, as mixing imposes grandeur. The hy- brid surpasses the domains of architecture and settles into the urban scale. It is an artefact able to exercise cen- tripetal force, a colossus counteracting the evil forces of dispersion.
The intimacy of private life and the sociability of public life dwell within the hybrid and produce constant activity, mak- ing it a building working full-time. It is not a disciplinary prototype but a concentration of interests, based not on tradition but rather on the future and the survival of which hinges on consensus.
- Prologue, by Steven Holl, in This is Hybrid: An Analysis of Mixed-Use Buildings
wow, thanks!
When do you lie?
Never.
I know this to be true.
I really like it that he chose an associate architect at his own firm as his favourite living architect.
someone give this guy the pritzker already!
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