Spaces Developed Through Drawings
Steven Holl is admired as much for his abundant drawings and watercolors as for his relatively few buildings. In the exhibition Steven Holl – Drawing as Thought, the Tchoban Foundation in Berlin is showing a selection of his most important and impressive graphic works.
His architectural oeuvre is relatively small and—with a few exceptions—limited to museums, concert halls, libraries, university and residential buildings. Nevertheless, Steven Holl, who was born in Bremerton, Washington, in 1947, and has had an office in New York City since 1977, is considered one of the most influential architects of his generation. His graphic work is most unique: Holl has already produced more than 50,000 sketches, drawings, and watercolors, a large part of them in now hundreds of spiral-bound sketchbooks in a consistent 5 × 7 inch format (approx. 12.5 × 18 cm). The Tchoban Foundation, the museum for architectural drawing in Berlin founded by the equally gifted master draftsman and architect Sergei Tchoban, is now showing a small but very impressive selection of Steven Holl's works over five decades.
The exhibition, curated by Kristin Feireiss, founder of the nearby Aedes Architecture Forum, is entitled Drawing as Thought, alluding to the (spatial) artist's working method: Steven Holl designs spatially, i.e. not on the basis of a spatial program that initially manifests itself as a floor plan, but with images of completed rooms in mind, where light-dark contrasts and thus atmospheres of light and space are considered from the outset. In this way, sheets are created that—even if they are still recognizably sketches or initial spatial studies—appear to a certain extent like finished compositions. The drawings embody the essence of an architectural design, which of course needs to be further refined (by office staff) as it is worked through. At the same time, they also seem like very well thought-out preliminary studies for autonomous works of art that could adorn the walls of an exquisite collector.
Steven Holl's international career began in 1988 when he won the competition to expand the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek in Berlin. Large-format drawings of his winning design take center stage on the first floor of the exhibition with almost exclusively black and white sheets. Interior studies (watercolor and pencil on paper) on torn-out sketchbook pages, large-format perspective views at night, axonometric views, and a section—each watercolor, ink and graphite on paper—illustrate the magnificent spatial creations that Berlin missed out on after reunification.
High-format design drawings for the Porta Vittoria urban planning competition in Milan (1986), which involved the reorganization of an abandoned railroad site, serve as a kind of prologue to the exhibition. Holl drew a series of very concise spatial studies in ink and graphite, somewhat reminiscent of the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico, and supplemented them with floor plan sketches, some drawn with lines of sight. The rest of the first gallery is dedicated to another unrealized competition design, the Palazzo del Cinema (Venice, 1990), with three large-format sheets in the same drawing technique as well as Holl's first building realized in Europe: the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (1992–1998), with its striking curved rear wall-roof section, is presented by means of 16 varied interior views from the sketchbook and four large-format interior perspectives. From then on, Holl drew exclusively with watercolor and pencil (later also with charcoal) on paper.
On the second floor of the exhibition, (significantly more) color comes into play. Here, sheets from Holl's most famous buildings and also from two current projects are brought together—though not in chronological order—starting with his last completed building for the time being, the Rubenstein Commons Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University (2016–2022), and ending with the in-progress Ostrava Concert Hall (since 2019). With the latter, which towers over an existing cultural center, he takes up his own idea for the expansion of the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, which is illustrated in Berlin with a number of study sketches with (rather unusual for Holl) detailed inscriptions.
The most impressive tableaux in this room are dedicated to two smaller but very important works by Steven Holl Architects: the St. Ignatius University Chapel in Seattle (1994–1997), with several subtly colored perspective interior views but also detailed studies and a particularly atmospheric exterior view at night; and Maggie's Centre Barts (2012–2017), a center for cancer patients at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, with several facade and interior studies including colored glass fragments reminiscent of the neume notation of a Gregorian chant.
Steven Holl's own retreat in Rhinebeck, New York, where the architect has created a simple wooden workspace, an exhibition space with library, a studio, and a guest house on a 30-acre (12-ha.) wooded site is presented in two display cases full of complete sketchbooks. Sitting on the edge of a lake, the retreat's Round Lake Hut (2009) is just big enough for Holl (alone) to sketch, draw, and watercolor in peace and quiet, which he says he does every day. His credo: “Creative and imaginative work begins in the solitude of the connection of the mind/eye/hand.”
This review was published originally as “Räume, entwickelt mit dem Zeichenstift” on German-Architects. English translation edited by John Hill.