Qingdao Culture and Art Center (2013)

Steven Holl’s World Of Watercolours

At a time of rapidly changing technology in the service of architectural design, Steven Holl’s watercolours is an important reminder of just how much you can do with the simplest of means.

The acts of sketching and model-making traditionally provide architects with much of their inspiration at the outset of the creative process. However, some move further into the realms of art to help them visualize their concepts, enjoying the fluidity and flexibility of paint and, in particular, the free-flowing qualities of watercolours. One such architect is American Steven Holl, who adopted the brush as an efficient way of transferring his ideas to paper.

Holl’s watercolours has become his signature, a truly unique style of visualization and one that continues to inspire awe among his fellow architects.

Holl shows off the rich-hued watercolours in his newest paint set, which he discovered at a shop on 29th Street. A gray painting for his Hunters Point Community Library in Queens, which will be completed in spring 2018, sits nearby.

All of Steven Holl’s buildings begin the same way: with an intuitive brush stroke, usually first thing in the morning. “For me, drawing is a form of thought,” he says. “I start every project with a concept diagram. I used to do pencil drawings. Those…