Holl may have worked with the computer to obtain these sculptures/objects, this assembled piece of furniture, but looking at it you can’t help thinking of the activity of cutting, perforating, and the way the wood panels are made. Fractal geometries apart, the world of engraving is a world of solids and voids, a world that is metaphysical before it is physical. It helps us to think in a more uncertain and therefore deeper way about the wooden boxes where we put our “things” everyday.

If Steven Holl wants to work on accident, he does so. He works on everything related to architectural material, anything that can “unsettle” it and change its perception without altering its essence, whether it involves a giant building or the smallest of objects. With a small piece of furniture he explores the phenomenological properties of artificial and natural light, following the conviction that has inspired the fading in and out of volumes in his constructions for years. In this case he allows himself an extra degree of freedom: the possibility of positioning the product both horizontally and vertically, thereby multiplying the variables in the observer’s spatial experience.

In April 2005, at the “Entrez lentement” exhibition in Milan curated by Pierluigi Nicolin, eight contemporary architects were invited to pay tribute to eight past masters. Steven Holl, in elective affinity with Alvar Aalto (and in particular with his Villa Mairea), created an installation entitled From porosity to fusion. It comprised a series of irregularly shaped totems whose surfaces were micro-perforated with different patterns. The visitor was enticed to wander among projected shadows and light filtered through thin pierced membranes, among slight overhangs and recessed volumes. It was an experimental workshop for reflecting on dematerialisation in a closed environment, with different qualities to an open-air building. With another drop in scale, Holl miniaturises his work in a piece of furniture.

The model. The furniture comprises five modules, linked by a hingeless metal strip. Each module is made from a leaf of wood 2.5 mm thick, shaped, laser-cut and then bent.

photography by Paolo Rosselli
edited by Rita Capezzuto
from Domus 891