1. How would you describe your signature style?

As we all know, we’re in the era

of the ‘iconic building’ and the ’starchitect’. However facile this might be, the
designs of public institutions are often offered to the biggest names, and the most
‘iconic’ architects. How do you feel about this trend, and how do you work in a
system like this and continue to create thoughtful, meaningful architecture, when
so many developers are looking for ‘the next Bilbao’?

Steven: I believe that architecture needs to be completely anchored in its program and site. Its
meaning must be so deeply rooted in the conditions of its inception that it‟s unfazed by fashion.
My first book Anchoring describes the relation of a building to a site, to its culture and to its
metaphysical origins. If architecture‟s original concept can go deeper, rather than broader, it
builds a meaning on the site. It fortifies a locus of thoughts and philosophical hopes, or even
humor and stories, which are oblivious to whatever style it is.

2. Are you concerned about environmental and social sustainability in your

buildings? If so, what role does green building play into your work?

Steven: The 21st century presents us with one third of the earth already developed, much of it in
sprawling waste. A fundamental change of attitude, a re-visioning of values must take place. We
emphasize sustainable building and site development as fundamental to innovative and
imaginative design.

In Shenzhen China, a city that went from 8,000 to a population of over 12 million, natural
landscape has been rapidly obliterated. New strategies for cultivation of urban vegetation are
crucial to maintain a balance of flora and fauna as well as natural aquifers and general climatic
balance. Advanced structural technologies and construction techniques open up the potential for
new flying architectures, horizontal skyscrapers and public function bridges developing new
urban layers. Our multifunctional “horizontal skyscraper” in Shenzhen, China won the
architectural competition due to the maximizing of public landscape while rising to the 35m
height limit and maximizing distant ocean views from the living/working spaces. Due to
sophisticated combinations of “cable-stay” bridge technology merged with a high strength
concrete frame there are no trusses in this floating skyscraper. The lush tropical landscape below
is be open to the public and will contain restaurants and cafés in vegetated mounds bracketed
with pools and walkways.

3. What do you feel is the greatest challenge when it comes to designing for
environmental sustainability?

Steven: The space, the geometry, the light of an architecture in great proportions must remain
the core aim, while engineering aims for zero carbon, ultra-green architecture. But this balance
between the poetry of architecture and its green engineering is crucial.

4. Many of your fans would say that you design your buildings with a strong
focus on both user experience and natural light, is this correct? Can you tell us
more about this?
Steven: Space is oblivion without light. A building speaks through the silence of perception
orchestrated by light. Luminosity is as integral to its spatial experience as porosity is integral to
urban experience.

For our Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma the most important building material
was light. Of the twenty-five galleries which make up the main function of the museum all have
a slice of natural light. The behavior of light guided many decisions. The low angle of the
Helsinki sun – never reaching above 51 degrees – helps give sectional form to the curved “light
catching” aspect of the architecture. Changes in natural lighting conditions are left visible – so
passing clouds bring shadow – brightness varies as the interior experience varies.

We conceive of the space, light and concept of a work from the very beginning. Often in concept
watercolors the aspects of light are there in the first sketch, integral to the concept of the
architecture, unique to the site and place. The infinite possibilities of light have been evident
from the beginning of architecture and will continue into the future. The revelations of new
spaces, like interwoven languages, dissolve and reappear in light. In magnificent spaces, light
changes and appears to describe form.

5. Can you tell us about the house you grew up in?

Steven: In the small town where I grew up, I wasn‟t exposed to architecture. Things that we (my
brother the sculptor and painter James Holl and I) did that were related to architecture were to
build tree houses. We made clubhouses, sometimes two stories, three stories, complicated
constructions and when I was seven or eight years old we had as many as three different
buildings under construction at the same time: a two-story tree house, a three-story free-standing
club house and an underground club house; which I remember had logs for a roof with old
carpets laid on top. Earth and grass were put over the carpets. A children‟s „mythological
landscape‟, it was like a small city with all these different constructions that we made. In my
mind I was already an architect by 1959.

6. Who inspires you?

Steven: I interviewed and was tentatively hired to work in the studio of Louis Kahn. However,
he died in March 1974, just before I was to move from San Francisco to Philadelphia. His works
and philosophy were very inspiring, as is the work of Le Corbusier. It seems to me inspiration is
contagious. I remember a text by Louis Kahn entitled, “How was I doing, Le Corbusier?” Kahn
held him up as a measure of inspiration.

7. What is your ultimate goal when it comes to your work? What do you want to
be remembered for?

Steven: I want to live by inspiration and concretize inspiration in space and light. Architecture
can be a gift left for others to enjoy – architecture together with landscape can form a special
reality – a special place, a place that is alive – inspires alive.