Seeing the Light

Photo: Courtesy of Steven Holl: Seven Houses by Steven Holl, Rizzoli New York, 2018

Steven Holl builds big. His gigantic mixed-use buildings continue to reshape the urban landscape across the world. His 720,000-square-foot Linked Hybrid in Beijing, an “open city within a city” completed in 2009, made good on his commitment to ecoethics with geothermal wells for heating and cooling, the deployment of lots of green space, and pedestrian-friendly walkways. But his residential work, also steeped in structural energy-saving methods, is really a testament to his love of nature and his creativity in mining the gifts of natural light, as illustrated by the seven houses he features in his new book, Steven Holl: Seven Houses, from Rizzoli New York. Above, at the T2 Reserve on his property in Rhinebeck, Holl applied his modernist, slightly off-kilter design magic to a former hunting shack, cladding it in tar paper and wood battens.

Holl redesigned the interiors of the former hunting shack to serve as a studio space, giving the simple plywood interior a coat of white paint. Photo: Courtesy of Steven Holl: Seven Houses by Steven Holl, Rizzoli New York, 2018

The seven houses in the book include Nail Collector’s House, Holl’s sketch of which is seen here. The house for a writer is situated on the site of an old nail factory, hence the name. Plus the owner has been collecting the square-head 19th-century nails he’s found on the land over the years. There are 24 windows that correspond to the 24 chapters in Homer’s Odyssey. The sketch looks like the home in a modernist fairy-tale. Illustration: Steven Holl/Courtesy of Steven Holl: Seven Houses by Steven Holl, Rizzoli New York, 2018

If you look very closely at this photograph of the wild landscape of a desert mesa in New Mexico, you can see the Turbulence House Holl designed adjacent to adobe houses built by the artist Richard Tuttle. Photo: Courtesy of Steven Holl: Seven Houses by Steven Holl, Rizzoli New York, 2018

The Turbulence House was designed to stand up to weather extremes and strong winds. The exterior was built in 21 prefabricated pieces and bolted together at the site. Photo: Courtesy of Steven Holl: Seven Houses by Steven Holl, Rizzoli New York, 2018

The cover of Holl’s new book. “Someone asked me what my favorite material is,” Holl says, “and I said, ‘Light, and it’s free.’” Photo: Courtesy of Steven Holl: Seven Houses by Steven Holl, Rizzoli New York, 2018