What do you think about Steven Holl's most current works? His work has become increasingly more sculptural with, what seems to be, a total disregard for the surrounding area. He has a large fetish for designing through the use of one-word catch phrases, which seems to come off clumsy and naïve. I'm looking over his Loisium Visitor's Center right now and it appears so arbitrary. In the past he has done some amazing things with natural light. Has he lost something?
I don't know about Holl in particular, but something I have wondered about in the past is when an architect of Holl's caliber starts to either phase himself out of the designs or gets phased out. I'm not implying that they are completely uninvolved, just that these great architects have a large hand in the concept of a project, but then the project loses something after being filtered through an office. So sure, Steven Holl's projects may be losing something in their detailing, or cohesiveness, or contectual influences, or whatever...but is the blame on Holl or the execution of the project?
His recent work is all about the large form with subtractions leaving void spaces for light or circualtion. I guess this has always been a theme of his work but it has completely enveloped it even surpassing his interest in light and texture. It's too bad because this has allowed his contractors or assistants (see MIT building) to get away with shoddy details in service of the whole. In the end it's the architects respinsibility, no matter the level of celebrity he or she has reached.
the scale in his projects have grown, and in my opinion, his "big idea" has not grown and is suffering in this transitory phase of his career from small to large scale.
has detailing really been his strong point?...
if you look at the storefront for art and architecture..
it's falling apart...but in truth it's a surprise it's lasted this long...
maybe now that his buildings are getting bigger there are more
details falling by the way side?
was rather unfavorably surprised by holl when i saw him as a juror at a critique. i didn't know anything about him personally--was expecting a much older, "old quiet wise man" type, instead he was very loud and a little annoying.
just wanted to say though, the storefront for art and architecture facade wasn't supposed to last this long in the first place--it was supposed to be the first in a series of different facades each lasting a matter of months not years. they didn't have enough money to do that though.
larslarson, The Storefront is falling apart but that uses a system of movable exterior walls that I have not seen before, one would expect some failure over time as FLW did with Falling water or Corb with villa Savoy (bot usin new construction methods). However if you look at the MIT dorm you will see that the simplest of details (spacing of metal panels) were not thought out leaving it up to the installer to figure out. Maybe it was spec'd but it's still Steve's responsibility to go up there and point out these mistakes.
i actually like the storefront and i understand their budgetary
constraints...i just think even with those constraints one should
have specified a material more appropriate for an urban/cold
climate...i really do like the space and the operable doors though...
as far as the mit dorm...i'm not quite sure what you're talking about jg
...i think the main problem i have with that building is that the system
was made particularly complex to make an end result that is fairly banal..i think it's fairly nice looking in some ways..but part of the
architect's responsibility is to design to your client's budget restraints
and in some way pander to the end user...i don't know that that
building functions all that well as a dorm...
but what the hell is that swiss cheese canopy over the main entrance?...
A few years back, the Atlanta Symphony was taking proposals from a group of big name architects to design the new Symphony hall. All the entrants gave a public presentation of their work, underlining their philosophy and what their 'big idea' would be for the symphony.
I went and saw most of the presentations - Stephen Holl suprised me because he seemed more like an 80's used car salesman with a bad hairpiece than an architect. I like a lot of his earlier work, but he was trying to pass this music and architecture spiel onto the commitee that was a gross oversimplification.
A few weeks later, Holl went to the press. A choice had not even been made yet and he was lambasting the whole selection process, the ASO committee, the master plan (which was done by Cesar Pelli).
Needless to say, he did not get the job. It went instead to Calatrava. An inside source said that besides his underhandedness in going to the press to criticize the process even before all the participants had presented, he wasn't selected because none of the musicians were buying his oversimplified architecture and music bullshit.
although i see the concern, i still think that holl is a master of composition and light...he may be beginning to channel louis kahn. its frank gehry im getting concerned about. i think i may soon be able to say out loud what i have been thinking for a few years...that i really dont think i like him...especially since the whole brooklyn fiasco is starting to unfold... forgive me o great one!
steven holl has always been a "big-scale" architect, not necessarily because many of his projects are BIG, but because he often begins by delineating larger urban orders and patterns, which are then transposed over secondary orders--like that of a university campus, a loft building, or a railyard. remember alphabet city? a novel typological account of the common building types in nyc, which were then abstracted as a formal vocabulary, trans-scalar, and disassociated with any given physical site.
I seem to remember reading an interview with Stephen Holl a while back (maybe in GA Document), and he was saying that he never wants his projects to get "too big" and he never wants his office to be more than 11 people (the number of people in a defensive line - he used to play football...) because he felt that it wasn't really architecture anymore if got too big that you can't craft every space, and 11 people is a good number of people so that you can really know each other and work well as a team, be able to celebrate each others birthdays, etc.
He said in that interview that he would rather teach some more, do less projects, in order to stay true to his own design approach, rather than get too big...
Question: Is it possible for an architect to become big and stay small?
Jul 16, 04 6:54 pm ·
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STEVEN HOLLow
What do you think about Steven Holl's most current works? His work has become increasingly more sculptural with, what seems to be, a total disregard for the surrounding area. He has a large fetish for designing through the use of one-word catch phrases, which seems to come off clumsy and naïve. I'm looking over his Loisium Visitor's Center right now and it appears so arbitrary. In the past he has done some amazing things with natural light. Has he lost something?
I don't know about Holl in particular, but something I have wondered about in the past is when an architect of Holl's caliber starts to either phase himself out of the designs or gets phased out. I'm not implying that they are completely uninvolved, just that these great architects have a large hand in the concept of a project, but then the project loses something after being filtered through an office. So sure, Steven Holl's projects may be losing something in their detailing, or cohesiveness, or contectual influences, or whatever...but is the blame on Holl or the execution of the project?
HOLLow indeed
His recent work is all about the large form with subtractions leaving void spaces for light or circualtion. I guess this has always been a theme of his work but it has completely enveloped it even surpassing his interest in light and texture. It's too bad because this has allowed his contractors or assistants (see MIT building) to get away with shoddy details in service of the whole. In the end it's the architects respinsibility, no matter the level of celebrity he or she has reached.
the scale in his projects have grown, and in my opinion, his "big idea" has not grown and is suffering in this transitory phase of his career from small to large scale.
has detailing really been his strong point?...
if you look at the storefront for art and architecture..
it's falling apart...but in truth it's a surprise it's lasted this long...
maybe now that his buildings are getting bigger there are more
details falling by the way side?
was rather unfavorably surprised by holl when i saw him as a juror at a critique. i didn't know anything about him personally--was expecting a much older, "old quiet wise man" type, instead he was very loud and a little annoying.
just wanted to say though, the storefront for art and architecture facade wasn't supposed to last this long in the first place--it was supposed to be the first in a series of different facades each lasting a matter of months not years. they didn't have enough money to do that though.
this is what happens when 'rendering with light' becomes the central idea behind the concept...does it still pass for content nowadays???
larslarson, The Storefront is falling apart but that uses a system of movable exterior walls that I have not seen before, one would expect some failure over time as FLW did with Falling water or Corb with villa Savoy (bot usin new construction methods). However if you look at the MIT dorm you will see that the simplest of details (spacing of metal panels) were not thought out leaving it up to the installer to figure out. Maybe it was spec'd but it's still Steve's responsibility to go up there and point out these mistakes.
i actually like the storefront and i understand their budgetary
constraints...i just think even with those constraints one should
have specified a material more appropriate for an urban/cold
climate...i really do like the space and the operable doors though...
as far as the mit dorm...i'm not quite sure what you're talking about jg
...i think the main problem i have with that building is that the system
was made particularly complex to make an end result that is fairly banal..i think it's fairly nice looking in some ways..but part of the
architect's responsibility is to design to your client's budget restraints
and in some way pander to the end user...i don't know that that
building functions all that well as a dorm...
but what the hell is that swiss cheese canopy over the main entrance?...
Actually like the new thing w/ the aluminum (?) cladding (winery?) Not bad, actually.
A few years back, the Atlanta Symphony was taking proposals from a group of big name architects to design the new Symphony hall. All the entrants gave a public presentation of their work, underlining their philosophy and what their 'big idea' would be for the symphony.
I went and saw most of the presentations - Stephen Holl suprised me because he seemed more like an 80's used car salesman with a bad hairpiece than an architect. I like a lot of his earlier work, but he was trying to pass this music and architecture spiel onto the commitee that was a gross oversimplification.
A few weeks later, Holl went to the press. A choice had not even been made yet and he was lambasting the whole selection process, the ASO committee, the master plan (which was done by Cesar Pelli).
Needless to say, he did not get the job. It went instead to Calatrava. An inside source said that besides his underhandedness in going to the press to criticize the process even before all the participants had presented, he wasn't selected because none of the musicians were buying his oversimplified architecture and music bullshit.
although i see the concern, i still think that holl is a master of composition and light...he may be beginning to channel louis kahn. its frank gehry im getting concerned about. i think i may soon be able to say out loud what i have been thinking for a few years...that i really dont think i like him...especially since the whole brooklyn fiasco is starting to unfold... forgive me o great one!
just wanna let you know, in case you didn't know, that dezain.net has a loisium gallery here.
steven holl has always been a "big-scale" architect, not necessarily because many of his projects are BIG, but because he often begins by delineating larger urban orders and patterns, which are then transposed over secondary orders--like that of a university campus, a loft building, or a railyard. remember alphabet city? a novel typological account of the common building types in nyc, which were then abstracted as a formal vocabulary, trans-scalar, and disassociated with any given physical site.
I seem to remember reading an interview with Stephen Holl a while back (maybe in GA Document), and he was saying that he never wants his projects to get "too big" and he never wants his office to be more than 11 people (the number of people in a defensive line - he used to play football...) because he felt that it wasn't really architecture anymore if got too big that you can't craft every space, and 11 people is a good number of people so that you can really know each other and work well as a team, be able to celebrate each others birthdays, etc.
He said in that interview that he would rather teach some more, do less projects, in order to stay true to his own design approach, rather than get too big...
Question: Is it possible for an architect to become big and stay small?
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