Sensitive Experience on the Steven Holl Architectural Drawings: Phenomenon, Fragment and Device

Abstract

Steven Holl starts every project with a visit to the place, where he realises diagrammatic drawings and perspectives on sensitive appearances perceived or associated. Later, he supports the argumental line of each project on a specific «limited concept» with a non graphic character. Never has he continued the process of project until this contrived driving principle is clearly identified. Later on Holl looks for a diagram, a new graphic configuration. He is continuously defining small fragments of the reality pursued, fixed by means of outline drawings realised in watercolour. The majority of them use the perspective, clearly located, under the vibration of a specific light, of an origin, intensity, colour and direction very clearly-cut. These drawings, gathered in a group, constitute a collection of percepts ordered according to a specific space linked to a dynamic or static state of the observer. Afterwards, his collaborators develop models and, finally, the project drawings. Steven Holl builds the whole from the fragment, and his architecture will not be fragments of forms but series of specific feelings. Here we report this creative graphic process of project creation and study the development of one of his paradigmatic buildings: The Museum of Contemporary Art of Helsinki «Kiasma». This research has been developed within the international research group ‘Graphic Thinking and Architectural Narrative’ of the University of Alicante.