Steven Holl: Making Architecture is on view at Bellevue Arts Museum March 27 – September 13, 2020.

Bellevue, WA—Bellevue Arts Museum is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating the craft of New York-based architect Steven Holl. Holl is an internationally renowned architect; Bremerton, WA native; and the creator of over 60 projects worldwide, including the Bellevue Arts Museum’s own buidling. Making Architecture, which opens at BAM on March 27, 2020, brings Holl’s processes to life through seventeen recent projects.

Works in the exhibition are organized around three distinguishing aspects of how Holl makes architecture. Thinking focuses on how Holl uses watercolor drawings, small exploratory models, and material fragments to generate ideas. Building reveals the process of making architecture through models, sculpture, and photographs taken during the actual construction process. And finally, Reflecting brings Holl’s ideas into sharp focus through a selection of digital films, and writings, both by and about Holl.

For forty years, Holl has presided over a practice that directly opposes the trend towards using technology to create architecture. His process is based on the idea that to achieve artful buildings he must continue to work by hand, creating watercolor drawings at every stage of making a building and engaging with what he calls the “thinking-making couple” of architecture.

Making Architecture marks the first time Holl’s work has been the focus of a solo exhibition at BAM since the building opened in 2001. Bellevue is the seventh stop on the exhibition’s international tour, and is one of only a few stops where visitors will have the opportunity to appreciate Holl’s work in a Holl-designed building.

Steven Holl: Making Architecture is organized by the Steven Myron Holl Foundation and curated by Nina Stritzler-Levine. The exhibition originated at Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz, New York in 2018 and traveled to the following venues: Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea; Seoul Center for Architecture and Urbanism, Seoul, Korea; Nanjing Sifang Museum, Nanjing, China; Urban Network Office, Shanghai, China; Fab-Union Space, Shanghai, China; and Archi Depot Museum, Tokyo, Japan. The local presentation of this exhibition is curated by Benedict Heywood. Presented in part by MG2. Sponsored by Seattle University. In-kind support from Seattle SignShop. Media Sponsors: KCTS 9 and The Stranger.

ABOUT BELLEVUE ARTS MUSEUM
Bellevue Arts Museum provides a public forum for the community to contemplate, appreciate, and discuss visual culture. We work with audiences, artists, makers, and designers to understand our shared experience of the world. bellevuearts.org.

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