Steven Holl: At New York’s MoMA

Delving into the creative process of a great mind is illuminating. It allows an observer to unpack the end product, to see beyond the blindingly impressive result, to pierce the veil of awesome completion. It’s the stuff of countless self-help books – how to nurture an abstract idea into full-flowering reality. Bookshop shelves are littered with titles such as ‘The Power of Now’, ‘The Artist’s Way’ and ‘The Secret’, each seeking to unlock the reader’s own potential by providing a spiritual, creative or financial plan of action. Would it surprise us if, in the age of computer assisted design, the central elements in the creative process of one of the world’s most acclaimed architects... were the humble pencil and pad?

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is staging PRÉ, an exhibition of 365 drawings made by Steven Holl between 2002 and 2008. Holl, the principal of the firm Steven Holl Architects, and a professor at Columbia University, has managed the difficult task of becoming one of America’s most commercially successful architects while maintaining the respect of his peers in the design community. He is also one of the more internationally diverse: where most American design professionals look to Europe for insight, Holl has long taken inspiration from East Asia. It is telling that his firm operates two offices, one in New York City and the other in Beijing. Holl’s projects cover the spectrum from the commercial to the cerebral – the recent addition to the Nelson-Atkins Musuem of Art in Kansas City sits alongside the Sarphatistraat offices in Amsterdam, Simmons Hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the utterly unique Linked Hybrid housing complex suspended in the Beijing sky. In addition to a host of industry awards, TIME Magazine in 2001 cemented Holl’s ‘starchitect’ status by naming him America’s best architect for “buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye”.

Holl’s professional creativity rests on his deceptively simple drawings, the most recent of which are profiled in the MoMA’s PRÉ exhibition. After a youth spent in Washington State and study in London and Rome, he began his career in New York in 1977. It was the year Woody Allen’s film ‘Annie Hall’ won the Oscar for Best Picture, and it was in that context that Holl fell into a lifelong love affair with both the city and black & white graphite drawings on paper. He saw his drawings as being “carved out architectural visions in texture, form, space and light”, and his obsession “slipped into a fetish”. At first the drawings would sometimes take weeks to complete, however by 1979 Holl was making new drawings every morning in spiral-bound 5x7 Langton notebooks. The early morning has the ability to make poetry out of a prosaic landscape, and Holl soon found that it was the best time to channel his intuition and first thoughts, a sure-fire way to set the imagination free. He discovered that Winsor & Newton watercolours were superior to graphite, as watercolours “gave intuition the primary position”. A watercolour concept sketch could simultaneously indicate space and, with the wipe of a brush, the direction of light.

Many, if not most, artists would argue that art provides a useful vehicle for self-expression. Holl’s drawings serve no such function: he sees them as being purely professional, a method by which he can capture knowledge acquired through his own intuition. Holl credits his old next-door neighbour on Sixth Avenue in New York, composer John Cage, with the view that drawings should not be a release valve, but rather a means by which one can capture chance: the chance of one’s intuitive brilliance. In this sense Holl’s drawings serve a disciplinary function, whereas self-expression would represent a submission to anarchy. In the modern world, with all the resources offered by computerised architectural production, escaping the tyranny of the ego and avoiding the risks of self-indulgence can be difficult. The lesson Holl imparts is that it is necessary – he believes that “the seed germ” is born only of an intuition. Once the seed germ is born, an analog drawing can be transformed into a digital hybrid, and thenceforth to spatial geometry and physical models.

PRÉ marks a return to the MoMA for Holl. The drawings on display range from details of buildings to abstract studies, and subtly make the argument that tranquility of mind is the key to creativity. The exhibition removes the showmanship from architecture by unlocking the innermost workings of one of the profession’s most esteemed members.

PRÉ is on view at the MoMA in New York City, on the third floor platform connecting The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, from 11 August 2008 to 2 February 2009. +

1 Abstract Sketch – 4/6/2002 (courtesy Steven Holl). 2 Linked Hybrid Beijing – 26/11/2003 (courtesy Steven Holl). 3 Sunrise over the Danube – 31/10/2006 (courtesy Steven Holl). 4 Planar Ocean Platform – 31/7/2006 (courtesy Steven Holl). 5 Abstract Sketch – Prague – 11/12/2004 (courtesy Steven Holl). 6 Abstract Sketch – 4/1/2004 (courtesy Steven Holl).