猎人角社区图书馆 Hunters Point Library © Steven Holl Architects
Steven Holl: “I am interested in Architecture that Speaks to the Soul”
由专筑网小R，王雪纯编译
斯蒂文·霍尔在纽约设计了三座建筑，分别是布鲁克林普瑞特学院希金斯大厅（2005）、位于上曼哈顿区的哥伦比亚大学坎贝尔体育中心（2013），以及长岛猎人角社区图书馆，该图书馆于9月24日正式投入使用。本次开放日也恰逢霍尔新书《Compression with the Library》的封面设计公开，这是这位建筑师执笔30多年的系列丛书中的第五部，来由普林斯顿建筑出版社出版发行。新建筑的尺寸类似于百事可乐霓虹灯的标牌，是一座坚固的平行四边形态的混凝土建筑，其中有着多层玻璃切口，建筑位于公共步行区之中，距离东河也很近，直接穿过曼哈顿联合国综合体和罗斯福岛屿的南侧。人们在曼哈顿东河海滨和轮渡上都能够看到这座建筑，因此它也成为了当地的地标，整座建筑大约花费了9年时间，它的完工象征着建筑师对于公共事业的巨大贡献。
霍尔的新建筑与其代表作品有些类似——都有着卓越的艺术气息、满足人们的感官感受。但这个新项目却较为低调，没有大型悬挑，也没有独特的形态，没有斑斓的色彩，也没有夸张的水池。在设计过程中，建筑师考虑了整体工业价值，从最初设想中的铝制覆层表皮改成了银色抹漆。但是这座建筑仍然具有其自身的代表特点——独特的工作空间与休闲场所，由建筑坚实的结构体系、洞穴般的内部空间、有着多个连接层次的开放书库组成。这个项目中最有趣的部分是屋顶露台，其中设置有阶梯式座椅。为了庆祝图书馆的开放，我们在其纽约工作室里见面并进行了对话，当前他有9个在建项目，遍布爱尔兰、中国台湾、非洲、美国，我们也就霍尔的设计期待与目的进行了沟通，部分采访专为“ArchDaily”的读者们而转录。
New York City now has three buildings by Steven Holl – Higgins Hall Insertion at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (2005), Campbell Sports Center for Columbia University in Upper Manhattan (2013), and Hunters Point Community Library in Long Island City, Queens that will open its doors to the public on September 24th. The event coincides with publishing Holl’s new book Compression with the Library’s abstracted image on its cover; it is the fifth volume of the architect’s written manifesto, 30-years-in-the-making series by Princeton Architectural Press. The new building, the size of the nearby landmarked Pepsi-Cola red neon sign, is a robust concrete parallelogram distinguished by softly outlined multi-story glazed cut-outs. It sits prominently on a new public promenade just feet away from the East River, directly across the United Nations complex in Midtown Manhattan and the southern tip of the Roosevelt Island with its Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park memorial by Louis Kahn. The new building is at once an iconic reference point, visible from Manhattan’s East Side and the ferries, and although it took nine years to finish, its completion is a positive sign of New York’s commitment to public projects being designed by our best architects.
Holl’s new building is consistent with his most representative pieces, long recognized for their artistry and ability to bring joy to all senses. It is a quiet work, nevertheless. There are no heroic cantilevers, no spherical forms, no colors, not even a reflective pool of water, which succumbed to the unfortunate value engineering in the design process, as did the original aluminum-clad skin, replaced with silvery paint. Yet, the building stands its ground. It is memorable, stubborn, even tough-looking structure that can only be understood by exploring its cave-like, singular interior of several interconnected levels of open bookstacks that offer working space, casual browsing, and stunning views over Manhattan. The best part is the tree-height roof terrace with stepped seating. In anticipation of the library’s opening, I met with Holl who currently has nine projects under construction – from Ireland, Taiwan, and Africa to all across the US – at his New York office for an intimate conversation about the architect’s aspirations and intentions. A small portion of our interview is transcribed below exclusively for ArchDaily readers.
猎人角社区图书馆 Hunters Point Library © Steve Holl Architects
猎人角社区图书馆 Hunters Point Library © Steven Holl Architects
Vladimir Belogolovsky（下文称为VB）：你曾经说过，建筑设计需要花费大量的时间和精力，建筑师也同样需要反思自己的所作所为。你能说说你的作品的中心思想吗？如果你要向一名外行人去阐释你的中心思想，你会如何去描述呢？
Steven Holl（下文称为SH）：首先，我是一位理想主义者！我的主要观点第一，我相信绘画是一种思维方式，第二，同时有限的概念也促进了设计思路，说它是有限，是因为我不会把一个概念用再另一个项目之中，这其实就是我的第一本书《Anchoring》所讲的内容。每个项目都与众不同，它有不同的场地、环境、气候、文化，同时促进建筑诞生的概念也各不相同，但是还是有很多建筑师把同一个概念重复地使用。第三，光线是空间的塑造材料，同时也是建筑中不可或缺的心理因素，第四，材料和触觉的触觉领域是现象学的目标，而空间的构成方式则事关人们的建筑体验感受。第五点，从城市规模到小型住宅的生态创新。举例来说，我们在北京的当代万国城项目有着中国历史上最大的地热井装置，它能够进行大范围的加热与冷却。第六点，一般来说，建筑结构会花费总成本的四分之一，因此它是设计内涵的有机组成部分。比如皇后图书馆，其混凝土外部框架结构就是其形式语言。最后一点，只要是艺术表达，绘画、雕塑、音乐、诗歌之间都会相互联系。
Vladimir Belogolovsky: You once said that buildings take an enormous amount of time and energy and that it is important for an architect to reflect on what you do as a practitioner. Could you talk about the key intentions of your work and how would you explain what you do to a lay person?
Steven Holl: First and foremost, I am an idealist! What are the main points of my idealism? Number one – I believe that drawing is a form of thought. Number two – a limited concept drives the design, limited because I would not use it for another one of my projects. That is what my first book, Anchoring is all about. Every project is different because it has a different site, circumstances, climate, culture. And it is different because the concept that drives the design is always different (we know many architects who carry their ideas from one site to the next). Number three – natural light is a primary space-shaping material. It is a psychological force that is essential in architecture. Number four – the haptic realm of materials and details as a phenomenological aim. The way spaces are made and what they are made of; it is all about how we experience architecture. Number five – ecological innovation – from the urban scale to the small house. For example, our Linked Hybrid project in Beijing had the biggest geothermal wells installation in the history of China that heats and cools that enormous project. Number six – structure makes up for a quarter of the total cost of the building. Therefore, it should be integral to the design ideas. For example, in the case of the Queens Library, the structure is the form. When you look at the building you are looking at the structure – concrete exoskeleton. And the last one is apropos art, the expressive link and interpretation of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, they are all connected.
哥伦比亚大学坎贝尔体育中心 Campbell Sports Center © Iwan Baan. ImageCampbell Sports Center
VB：你的作品始于你水彩草图中的文字和图像。这些隐喻和概念都能够激发你的设计灵感。我这里有你画的一些草图，你在上面写了“固定、交叉、连锁、缠绕、混合、铰接、悬挂、迷你乌托邦、孔洞、光环、物中之物、乐谱、石盒中的7个瓶子、毕加索的吉他画作”等等，你从不会重复这些想法。你的想法都从哪里来的呢？谁激发了你的这种思维模式呢？
SH：我从事大学教授很多年，逐渐演绎出了属于自己的设计策略，这些策略会应用在建筑设计之中，我对自己的设计工作充满了热情。除了建筑师，我还是一位冲浪爱好者，我还有速度最快的车，我能够在街头比赛中获胜。无论我做什么，我都能够充满热情，我也会尽自己所能去做到最好。在1966年，我决定学习建筑，因为我从小就喜欢这个东西，小时候和家人在后院就进行着类似的工作。后来我去了位于西雅图的华盛顿大学，在那里我学到了很多哲学，也了解到了许多优秀的作品。我的建筑历史教授Hermann G. Pundt告诉我，“一座建筑中有着比表象更加丰富的内涵”，试想，如今有多少真正的建筑能达到他所描述的水平？每次我在进行建筑设计时，我都会想到这句话。
VB: Your projects start with images and words that you express in your contemplative watercolors. These metaphors and concepts trigger your projects. Here is the list of a few of them: anchoring, intersection, interlocking, intertwining, hybrid, hinge, suspension, mini utopia, porosity, light loop, a thing within a thing, music score, seven light bottles in a stone box, Guitar painting by Picasso, and so on. You never repeat these ideas. What I am interested in is where do these ideas come from and who inspired you for this methodology?
SH: I worked for many years as a university professor developing my own strategies that I would use as an architect in my practice. I am very passionate about my designs and in whatever I do. Before I was an architect, I was a surfer and I had the fastest car in Bremerton, Washington, a 1957 Chevy with 327 cubic-inch V8, 3-speed manual transmission. And I could beat a brand-new Mustang coming off the showroom floor, and I did it by winning at a street race! Whatever I do I am passionate about it and I will take my passion as far as I can. So, in 1966, I decided to study architecture. I had inclinations toward building things, which I did in my backyard with my father and brother since I was little. Then I went to the University of Washington in Seattle where I studied philosophy and the work of many great architects. My History of Architecture professor Hermann G. Pundt told me, “There should be more in a building than when you look at it.” Just think about it – for how many buildings that’s true today? I think of that statement when I work on every one of my buildings.
哥伦比亚大学坎贝尔体育中心 Campbell Sports Center © Iwan Baan
我花了很多时间才建立起自己的观点。作为一名教师，我相信思想是建筑中最最重要的东西。我的第一本书名叫《Anchoring》，其封面是柏林图书馆，这是我很重要的一个项目，但是它并未落地，封面上还有克兰布鲁克自然科学博物馆，这是个关乎新和旧的内容，这个项目已经建成。接下来便是《住宅：黑天鹅理论（House: Black Swan Theory）》，这是一本关于住宅的书籍，然后是《都市主义：带着怀疑的工作（Urbanisms: Working with Doubt）》，其封面是深圳的万科中心，这本书关乎城市项目，其中包含了促进和削弱城市化的概念。最新的一本书刚刚出版，封面是皇后图书馆，其中包含有5个部分，总结了过去12年的工作内容，这五个部分都有普林斯顿建筑出版社出版，包含了我近30年来的作品。如果说要把我最喜欢、最棒的一些项目放在一起，那么其实都是一些未建成的项目，例如1988年的柏林图书馆，以及1990年的威尼斯Palazzo Del电影院，这些项目都很有想法，只是已建成的作品的概念更具说服力一些，如果这些独特的想法能够实现，就能够让世界更加丰富。
It took years for me to develop my position. As a teacher, I believe that ideas are the most important things in architecture, not buildings that get built. My first book was Anchoring with Berlin Library on the cover, my most important project that was never built. Then came Intertwining with Cranbrook Institute of Science diagram on the cover, which was about intertwining old and new; that project was built. Then came House: Black Swan Theory, a book on houses, followed by Urbanisms: Working with Doubt with Horizontal skyscraper in Shenzhen on the cover. This book is on my urban projects and it talks about such ideas as densification and eradicating suburban sprawl. And the latest book, Compression with the Queens Library on the cover, just came out. It caps out five volumes and presents the work of the last twelve years. So, these five little books, all by Princeton Architectural Press, constitute the last 30 years of my work. If I was asked to put together my greatest hits, many of them would be those projects that never got built – Berlin Library from 1988. Another project would be Palazzo Del Cinema in Venice from 1990. It is all about the ideas. The built works give more credence to the ideas. Then it becomes clear that unique ideas which some would consider extreme, could be realized and enrich the world.
哥伦比亚大学坎贝尔体育中心 Campbell Sports Center © Steven Holl Architects
VB：你曾经说过，当你努力创造一些东西时，你会带上各种主观感受，你能说说主观性在你的作品中的作用吗？我对这个方面很感兴趣，因为很多年轻建筑师都喜欢说合作性、客观性、呼应性、特定性、实用性、间接性等等。
SH：我认为这不太好。比如苹果公司的联合创始人Steve Wozniak，他就喜欢独立工作。Susan Cain的著作《Quiet》谈到内向性。在创作时间，人们就应该保持沉默并且进行思考。James Watson和Francis Crick在梦到一条蛇吞下尾巴之后发现了DNA的双螺旋结构，这些都并非来源于实用型策略。这是激动人心的时刻，也是一个梦想。当然，建筑需要合作，但是也要有创造性的突破，那么这时候你就需要进行深层次的思考与联系，这种联系需要将主观性和实用性结合起来。
VB: You said that when you work on creating something you try to bring all kinds of subjective forces. Could you talk about the role of subjectivity in your work? I am interested in this because now so many young architects praise themselves for being collaborative, objective, responsive, specific, pragmatic, circumstantial...
SH: I think this is a mistake. You know, Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, had to work individually. There is a book Quiet by Susan Cain, which is about introversion. The reason you need silence and reflection during the creative time and not the business of voices is that creativity is all about intuition. James Watson and Francis Crick figured out the structure of DNA, double helix after one of them had a dream of a snake swallowing its tail. That did not come from a pragmatic approach. It was an inspirational moment, a dream. Of course, architecture is about collaboration, but to have a true creative breakthrough idea you need a deep connection to intuition that fuses subjectivity with pragmatism.
北京当代万国城 Linked Hybrid © Shu He
VB：你常常说到抽象的必要性，为什么呢？
SH：哥伦比亚大学教授、诺贝尔奖获得者、神经系统科学家Eric Kandel在2016年的著作《艺术与脑科学的还原主义》中曾经说过，大脑需要抽象的东西。我们从视觉与物理现象中所看到和感受到的内在机制取决于自下而上的策略，而这是从抽象的元素中建立起来的，大脑会从中提取出我们分析和理解的东西。相反来说，如果应用自上而下的策略，我们的想象力就会被扼杀。也就是说我们已经通过相关信息明确地知道了这种的东西的定义。这不够抽象，如果它的意义已经确定了，我们的大脑就不再努力去理解它的内在含义了。
VB: You often talk about the need for abstraction. Why is that?
SH: In his 2016 book Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Columbia University professor, Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, argues that the brain needs abstraction. The internal mechanisms with which we see and experience visual and physical phenomena, depend on a bottom-up approach, meaning building up from elements of abstraction, coming up to terms with something that we analyze and to make sense of it. The opposite, top-down approach of given figuration stifles our imagination. A form of a cupola is an example of top-down thinking. In other words, we already know what it is. We have multiple references to what a cupola is. It is not abstract enough, as the meaning of the thing is a given, and therefore our mind is not working on figuring it out.
哥伦比亚大学坎贝尔体育中心 Linked Hybrid Campbell Sports Center © Steven Holl Architects
VB：在你的抽象建筑中，你会避免一些人们所熟知的东西是吗？你希望人们无法从中找到熟悉的元素吗？
SH：我认为光线、空间、材质、色彩、细部，这些都是要素自身，抽象的能量在于我们可以用新方法来制造东西，我们可以创造新意义，不需要参考。
VB: In your abstracted buildings, you avoid giving us familiarities to something that we already know, right? You want us to figure them out based on unfamiliar elements, is that so?
SH: I think light, space, material, color, details, those are elements in themselves. And the power of abstraction is that we can make things in a new way. We can make new meanings, new entities. We don’t need references.
北京当代万国城 Linked Hybrid © Shu He
VB：创新很伟大，但是你并不认为建筑会出现这样一个节点，这我在2012年讨论过，那便是建筑师开始厌倦不断地创新。建筑界有着太多的新想法与新形势，很多人都开始问这样一个问题，是不是还能有其他的形式呢？
SH：如果建筑更多的是注重内部而非外观，那就不一样了。也许在2012年，网络图片能够给我们带来很大的压力，以至于很多人忽略这些东西。但是我们需要把图像和实际功能联系起来，我喜欢对话灵魂的建筑。
VB: New is great, but don’t you think that there came a point in architecture, and this was very recently, I would argue in 2012, when architects got tired of making new things all the time. Architecture became oversaturated with new ideas and forms, and many started asking this question – so what if there is another shape?
SH: Not if the building is more on the inside than looking at it. Maybe by 2012 images online gave us so much pressure that so many could not see beyond them. But we need to relate images to the content. I am interested in architecture that speaks to the soul.
普瑞特艺术学院 Pratt Institute © David Sundberg-Esto
VB：我很欣赏你通过自己的方式来创造空间、来进行深入的对话，这是一位建筑师应该做的内容。我提到2012年David Chipperfield的“Common Ground”威尼斯双年展，在此之后，建筑师们都开始寻求共同点，并且对自己的思路进行调整，这就导致了想法的汇合和趋同。
SH：合作建筑吗？
VB：是的，这只是其概念中的一部分，更重要的是，合作建筑是一种解决问题的方法，它具有实用型特征，并且强调更多的是社会与生态方面的内容。但是，这会偏离个人特点与艺术性。
SH：实用性就是建筑施工、生产，而建筑则是艺术。你说的是一个悲伤的故事，我相信建筑可以改变人们的生活方式，它可以改变一个人，甚至改变世界。
VB: Speaks to the soul through your own way of inventing space, your own way of getting to the soul. Which I appreciate and I think that’s what architecture should be doing. But I am referring to the 2012 Common Ground Venice Biennale by David Chipperfield, after which architects started looking for their common ground and to find it, inevitably, they had to start aligning themselves. This led to a kind of convergence of ideas and by 2016, I believe, the common ground was found, unfortunately.
SH: Corporate architecture?
VB: For sure, it is a part of it. More to the point, it is problem-solving, pragmatics, emphasis on social and ecological aspects. But also, more and more distancing from anything personal, artistic, and driven by a single author.
SH: Pragmatics is just building construction, production. Architecture is art. What you are describing is a sad story. I believe that architecture can change the way we live. It can change a person. It can change the world.
深圳万科总部 Vanke Center © Steven Holl Architects
深圳万科总部 Vanke Center © Steven Holl Architects
猎人角社区图书馆 Hunters Point Library © Steven Holl Architects
猎人角社区图书馆 Hunters Point Library © Paul Warchol
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