Steven Holl's Portfolio of Chinese Projects Examined

By Louise Chen

Originally published: July 28, 2010

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/35333/steven-holls-portfolio-of-chinese-projects-examined

At the same time that a retrospective of Steven Holl Architects' work is on view in a 16th century castle in Lecce, Italy, another exhibition featuring seven of the firms projects in Chinese cities is opening on Friday, July 30, in the historic Chinese city of Hangzhou.

Titled "Urbanism: Steven Holl + Li Hu," the exhibition features models, drawings, and 3D animations of recent projects, like the Nanjing Museum of Art and Architecture, Beijing Linked Hybrid, Shenzhen Horizontal Skyscraper, and Chengdu Sliced Porosity Block, and aims to present and celebrate the collaborative efforts of Steven Holl’s New York office and its Beijing branch, launched in 2006. Despite the 12-hour time difference between the two cities, the architects have been productive. They are adding three new major projects in Hangzhou — the Shan-Shui Oxygen and Boiler master plan, the Triaxial Field Pavilion, and a campus for the Music Museum. Designs for all three will all be on view in the exhibition.

The Shan-Shui Oxygen commission was won in a heated design competition that pitted Steven Holl Architects against rivals Herzog & de Meuron and David Chipperfield. The firm has designed an oxygen and boiler plant on the city’s outskirt while maintaining a harmonious relationship with the natural scenery of the renowned West Lake. To transform the old site, the architects are incorporating green technologies throughout the complex. Within the rebuilt shells of the oxygen and boiler plants, new experimental architectural spaces may be utilized as cafes, bars, and exhibition or performance spaces.

Presenting a close look at some of the most radical additions to the skylines of China's cities in recent years, the exhibition also offers a close view at the negotiation that continues to occur between modernity and tradition, development and sustainability throughout the country.

A Luxury Shoebox Apartment Draws the Spotlight in Hong Kong

BY LOUISE CHEN

Originally published: July 30, 2010

http://sea.blouinartinfo.com/features/article/34867-a-luxury-shoebox-apartment-draws-the-spotlight-in-hong-kong

Hong Kong is a notoriously tightly packed city, but architect Gary Chang has devised a way to stretch out and relax — even if you live in a 330-square-foot studio.

Nicknamed “Domestic Transformer,” Chang's redesigned apartment of those measurements can morph into 24 domestic configurations through the use of sliding steel walls, which with a push reshape the space into a dining room, a yoga studio, a home theater, or other desirable spaces. The furniture is either foldable or hidden between the walls, which themselves are embedded with closets and storage shelves. With yellow-tinted, light-absorbing French windows and a large reflecting mirror masking the sliding tracks on the ceiling, the apartment always seems drenched in warm natural sunlight — an eco-friendly touch that allows inhabitants to forgo electric lights for much of the day.

In a densely populated city, the most precious commodity is space. Growing up in mountainous Hong Kong, Chang learned how to cope with tight space long before studying architecture — he grew up in the apartment's tight quarters with his parents and sisters, sleeping in the living room. After graduating from architecture school, he returned to remodel the space with his economical designs. Now, after his family has moved out, he has chosen to remain in his tiny home. “I’m always here, I don’t move but the house moves,” Chang says in the video below.

Chang’s design offers both efficiency and livability — a combination not to be underestimated in a world with diminishing resources.

A Survey of Steven Holl's Architecture Comes to an Italian Castle

By Louise Chen

Originally published on artinfo.com, August 05, 2010

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/architecture-design/article/35149-a-survey-of-steven-holls-architecture-comes-to-an-italian-castle

Steven Holl, the award-winning architect behind such acclaimed buildings as the 2007 "lens" expansion to Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, is having a welcome turn in the spotlight thanks to a survey of his recent European and Chinese projects at the 16th-century castle of Acaya in Lecce, Italy. Titled “Su Pietra,” the exhibition — running from July 10 through January 15 — is an ambitious detailing of Holl's design process, with displays ranging from drawings and building models to 3-D animations, with images of his postmodern structures cast onto the castle's ancient stone walls via high-definition projections.

An architect whose sensitive designs often play with feints of lighting and minimalist touches to all but disappear into their surroundings, Holl is something of a futurist naturalist — an approach that can be clearly seen in his European projects. In Hamarøy, Norway, for instance, the architect's 2009 Knut Hamsun Center — a monument to the country's controversial Nobel Prize-winning author and Nazi sympathizer — is a block of black wood topped by reedy plant life, resembling an angular chunk of obsidian growing out of the landscape. The Herning Museum of

Contemporary Art in Denmark, on the other hand, is an ethereal complex of broad white surfaces that sits, almost hovering like a low cloud, in the midst of a field. 

The Chinese part of the exhibition, meanwhile, revolves around the themes of urbanization, multi-functionality, and sustainability. After launching his Beijing office in 2006, the architect and his partners Li Hu and Chris McVoy have built up one of the most sought-after international firms for new landmark projects in a major Chinese city, creating structures known for their shifting views, malleable spatial arrangements, and dynamic use of water and air to create micro-climate outdoor public areas.

The best-known of these was Holl's first project in China's capital city, the 722,000-square-feet Linked Hybrid complex, which consists of eight towers linked by a ring of sky bridges. It was chosen as the “Best Tall Building” of 2009 by the Chinese Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats. Then, in Shenzhen, the Vanke Center — dubbed “the horizontal skyscraper” — stretches for 200,000-square-feet, a span as long as the height of the Empire State Building, offering a 360-degree view of the surrounding tropical landscape.