I'm fresh off a few rounds of drinks following a great lecture by Steven Holl, so please forgive any ebullience. There are some things that should be shared from his talk.

He spent quite a bit of time with his projects in China. A great moment was when he was talking about his project in Shenzhen, where he puts the entire building up in the air, and says "it's like a student project isn't it?" The difference of course being that in China you can get it built, as if the building industry were a giant 3d-printer. He showed an image of a 3,000 pound cast iron joint and remarked upon his surprise at seeing it for the first time, built: "where did this come from?" It seems remarkable (maybe a bit frightening?) that an architect can design such a huge project and not be responsible for something like a massive joint like that. It reminds me of the weird honeycomb-like support material that a 3d plastic printer builds--you don't design it, but it looks crazy and kinda cool.

A great point he made was that global flux and temporal conditions need not result in an impermanent architecture. If we recall his investment in type from the Pamphlet Architecture series, it makes sense that he is a believer in monumentality (in response to a question about his favorite architects, living or dead, he said Oscar Neimeyer and Lou Kahn--who died before he could get a chance to apply for a job).

Some more great quotes;
In response to how he built his practice in the US: "I'm a product of an international world"

"Process can give you form by accident"

"All architecture is collaborative"

Thank you Mr. Holl for the inspiration, we all need to take architecture a bit less seriously.