House: Black Swan Theory

Steven Holl is known for an architecture that considers place, time, and the senses of the viewer. This philosophy has created some of the richest and most celebrated buildings of the past several decades. In Holl's own poetic voice, House describes fifteen residences (built and unbuilt) that give insight into the source of his unique architectural perspective, including his most current along with his best-known houses from the recent past. Ordered according to scale (largest to smallest), the houses in this book span the globe, ranging from a secluded location in Hawaii to the Catskill Mountains of New York, to Martha's Vineyard, to The Hague in the Netherlands. Through Holl's attempt to build into and with the site, these houses enhance and reveal the unique qualities of their locations. Holl inverts the usual universal-to-specific order by working from the specific toward the universal. By presenting a selection of his houses, Steven Holl suggests a "black swan" theory for architecture - mutable and unpredictable.

Steven Holl is a tenured professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture and Planning.