BOOKISH, BLINKERED

Steven Holl’s Hunters Points Library is the jewel in the Queens Public Library System, an audacious starchitect-designed monument built to serve a growing community. When it opened in the fall of 2019 Michael Kimmelman raved in the Times, calling it “one of the finest public buildings New York has produced this century.” And it is extraordinary when seen from Manhattan, across the East River, and approached on foot from the local subway station. The five-story concrete volume, eroded by gigantic worm-shaped windows, resembles the mute, enigmatic structures in Holl’s iconic watercolors, that lure one through their shadowy passages.

But the magic ends as one steps inside the library. The worm-shaped windows are overscaled, and set with relation to the floors. The library’s trays, rising in a “V” from the ground floor entrance, are narrow, squeezed between stairs along its west and east facades that offer expansive river and city views. The circulation, in pinched paths along the railings and staircases, is contorted and cramped. When I wandered through one Saturday morning I came uncomfortably close to patrons perusing the stacks, reading the paper, and studying at tables, and starstruck architects taking pictures. We’re used to this kind of crowding in a city building, but not in a new building, or in a building this large, which frames so much empty space at its center. The library is currently facing ADA claims, which isn’t surprising. It seems to have been planned pictorially – to generate spectacular views within and without – rather than pragmatically.

As a working architect one’s vision is continually tempered by realities of program and budget, and a structure is typically shaped to enclose the minimum square footage required. To design a public building as Holl has, squeezing and scattering its program through narrow plates in an immense volume which could have provided much more, is extravagant. To design a library as Holl has, that offers no welcoming space for reading, studying or resting, is criminal. The building opens itself generously to the outside, but it doesn’t hold people inside.

Photograph by Paul Warchol. Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects.

March 09, 2020 by Nalina Moses

How is a contemporary art museum different from any other kind of art museum? And how is a museum different from any other kind of building? Kiasma, the contemporary art gallery in Helsinki designed by Steven Holl, might be the perfect showcase for contemporary art. Museums with similar programs, like PS1 and Mass MoCA, both adaptations of existing buildings, seem to have been designed primarily to accommodate the humongous scale of so much contemporary work, as well as an increased focus on sculpture and installations. Kiasma has been designed to house the art, and delight visitors, in an array of galleries that are diverse in size, proportion and character. The result is a warm, welcoming gallery for a kind of art that is, oftentimes, not.

The most surprising thing about the building is its gentleness. Kiasma, which Holl won in a design competition, opened in 2008, at at time when he was regarded as a rock star in the United States. Publicity photos showing the building’s sweeping interior ramp made the museum seem highly expressive, sculptural, and idiosyncratic – another signature work from another over-regarded post-postmodern architect. But the building is astoundingly fluid; one moves through it effortlessly. A great deal of this is due to the careful composition, scaled beautifully for the moving body and alert to the picturesque. And a great deal of it is due to the judicious use of daylight, which is carried into the galleries through concealed windows and skylights. It’s a wonderful place to see contemporary art and, probably, just about anything.

July 12, 2012 by Nalina Moses