In recent years the research of Steven Holl has approached various project scales, from master plans and large projects in China to museums and art institutes, skyscrapers and universities, where the theme of the porosity of the architectural enclosure, the intersection between geometric forms capable of ‘excavating’ and shaping surfaces and spaces, has been a sort of constant, a red thread that runs through the various typologies and each specific solution.
The genre of the single-family house, a typology addressed by Holl since the start of his career, has remained a fixed point in all his design research, as can be seen in the project for the ‘Ex of In House’ illustrated here. This small, dense work of architecture, which contains a studio/home for an artist, is part of a reserve known as T2.
It is an area of about ten hectares, with dense woods and rocky terrain, where in recent years Holl has conducted fertile experimentation on the theme of the single-family house, with an eye on getting beyond the stereotypes of reassuring vernacular or modernist architecture, to develop – as he puts it – “a language of space aimed at inner spatial energy strongly bound to the ecology of the place.”
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