Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/496780
176 CULTURED Architect Steven Holl is known for seizing the moment, in senses both literal and metaphoric. He's a forceful and confident presence in person, and his buildings make a strong statement without grandstanding. But he also believes that the accumulation of moments—nothing less than time itself, and how people move through spaces—is the most important element in architecture. After having a practice for nearly 40 years, the New York based Holl is by now something of a museum specialist. His firm has designed a dozen of them, and they comprise about half of his practice these days, with the other half devoted to various types of university work and large-scale projects in China (where he has an office in Beijing, illustrating the importance of that country to anyone who builds). Holl is well known for his watercolors, and started his career as an artist, so his affinity for museums comes from deep within. "I read a lot about the problems of museums, and I think about it a lot," says Holl, sitting in his New York office on the far-west edge of Manhattan between Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. He maintains a more freewheeling studio atmosphere there for his staffers than is found in most architecture shops. Holl talks excitedly about his design for the new Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, due in 2016, which is clad in concrete and weathered zinc—and was done on a smaller budget than many of his marquee projects. "They didn't have extra money," he says. "But everyone came forward because there was a desire to have a place for art." This is an architect who can break down the typology of museum buildings frankly. "There are three types," says Holl. "The type that's over-expressive, where the architecture completely cancels the possibility of the art; then the type of white boxes that suck the life out of the art. And the third type is what we are trying to develop," he goes on. "There's a deep respect for the art, but there's a feeling of inspirational movement and light that brings you through the building, that makes you want to turn the next corner. Everyone here is devoted to finding a way to get this third type." No project shows his thinking more clearly than his design for the two-building addition to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, part of a massive $450 million expansion to be completed by 2019. Holl did something many architects are loathe to: He told his client they needed to rethink their whole plan. And his boldness helped him beat out competition like Snøhetta and Morphosis. Originally, the museum asked for a new gallery building and a new parking garage. Instead, Holl told them they needed to bury the parking underground and, in the process, greatly expand the Glassell School of Art, which runs by the museum located in the middle of the campus. Despite not having intended to revamp the Glassell—which required raising more money—the museum went for the new master plan (which includes a conservation lab by Lake Flato Architects). "It was a risk," he says of the plan, a truly pedestrian-friendly setting in Houston's urban context. "You have one chance to make a real campus. And this is like a train going down the track. You have to switch now or it's on the wrong track forever." The moment was seized. The 164,000-square-foot gallery building will house 20th and 21st century art, and it brings the feeling of the sculpture garden inside through cladding of translucent glass. This provides a nice contrast with the other materials on the distinguished Houston campus— which features buildings by Rafael Moneo (stone) and none other than Mies van der Rohe (black steel and transparent glass)—as well as acting as an eco-conscious "cool jacket" to manage Houston's heat. PORTRAIT COURTESY OF MARK HEITHOFF; PHOTOS COURTESY OF STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS