Steven Holl

After his studies in New York, Rome and London, Holl set up his own architect’s studio in 1976 in New York, though he did not achieve international recognition until 1991 when he designed an innovative apartment building in Fukuoka (Japan).

With certain similitudes to Eisenman’s style, his work is characterised by the use of fragmented cubes and the modulation of space and light. By means of placing openings on corners, edges and sides of cuboid structures, he remarks the qualities of folds and continuation.

Amongst his works we may highlight the Chapel of Saint Ignatius in Seattle (Washington) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. The MOMA exhibited models of his work in 1991 and he has been awarded prizes such as the AIA of Honour, the Grand Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture and the award granted by Time magazine to the best architect of America.

Steven Holl Architects [www]

 

Proposta para a Cidade da Cultura

 

The open dynamism of the New City of Culture is expressed in Fusion Plans. The institutions transcend into autonomous entities, blending in the same manner as culture’s evolution: music with poetry and opera, literature with cinema and history.
History, the state or action of uniting, brings together the different programmes in the complex into potential crystallisations. It is a programmatic and dynamic union with flexible, superimposed connections. Changes in the programme blend into the twists and turns of the floor plans and sections.

The expression of each different function of the buildings is synthesised in the glass architecture. The corridors and the connections between cultural zones become an important catalyst.

Imagine architecture made of transparent and white translucent glass, emerging from the green Galician stone. The double-glazed glass walls, advanced in ecological terms, recycle the winter air and issue refrigerated air in the summertime.

The new city shall thus show a really unique architecture as a dynamic expression of fusion with an open core, an engine of culture.