Museum of Architecture in Wrocław, together with the Steven Myron Holl Foundation and the Cabinet of Architecture in Ostrava, would like to invite you to the exhibition Steven Holl. Making Architecture.
Steven Holl, (born 9 December 1947, Bremerton, Washington, USA) is an American architect and artist whose work draws on contemporary theories of phenomenology. Rather than imposing a style on a place, he argued that the place itself should generate the ‘architectural idea’ applied to it.
Architectural practice is changing dynamically. All aspects of creativity and production have reached an unprecedented pace, and the standard methods of an architect’s work are increasingly being displaced by technology. This situation generates interesting questions - about our environment and about the potential of architecture, seen as an expressive art form. The increasing sophistication of computer programs undoubtedly makes things easier for architects, but the elimination of manual tasks in the creation of architecture changes the final appearance and behaviour of a building, and can even affect the feelings of its inhabitants. The connection between hand and mind, as opposed to computer, allows subtleties and nuances of colour, materials, light and space.
Steven Holl has been at the forefront of efforts to oppose the seemingly ubiquitous trend towards digitalisation for forty years. His approach to design is that imaginative buildings can only come from the human hand. He calls the process itself a thought and design duo. Holl paints watercolours at every stage of a building’s construction: from the idea to the finished object. He creates them in his home studio, located in Rhinebeck, or in one of his two New York offices.
This exhibition, part of the Hudson Valley Master’s Series on display at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, explores Holl’s distinctive creative process with eleven of his projects. Despite their geographic span (four continents) and programmatic diversity (from healthcare facilities to libraries, art centres and museums), all of these projects share a common trait - the thought and execution duo of well-functioning architecture.
11.06 - 22.08.2021
Museum of Architecture in Wrocław
Curator : Nina Stritzler-Levine