Steven Holl Architects new website launches today, April 22, 2025 —
In designing anew Steven Holl Architects’ website, a central inspiration has been the above 1996 note by Holl, concerning the firm’s website —
It would be the “simplest website of any architect on the WWW.” Its primary purpose would be simply “to exist” and tell the latest activity of the office in the most minimal way possible. To do this, the firm wouldn’t put lavish time consuming images on the site, but rather supply line drawings and floorplans, which are typically lower in file size and load much faster. The site also needed to be up and running ASAP.
Today, 28 years later, the world wide web can quickly load any image, among other things. Despite many technological advances, something about this 1996 manifesto still rings true — perhaps because it embodies the ethos of the studio, their projects, and philosophy — timeless, spacious, calm — yet also memorable. A poetic and functional architecture simultaneously.
Tomato
The website features a red-orange color we call “tomato.” A contrast button in the lower right hand corner of the website enables visitors to turn tomato to black for much stronger contrast. This tomato was inspired by Steven Holl’s scarf and shoes.
Air Cinema
Project pages are long scrolls. They go between images and text, each one at a time. Sometimes images are small, allowing space to breathe, while other times they are large and immersive, taking over the full screen. These pages end with credits honoring everyone involved, like a film.
Architecture (like film, like some websites) is an endurance group activity — taking many hands, many energies, over a long period of time, to make. Holl writes, “If a project can radiate something positive through all these energies, you have really made a contribution that’s beyond a creative concept.”
When viewing an individual project on mobile, turning one’s device to landscape mode enables an image slideshow — a useful feature.
Watercolors
The website features Steven Holl’s watercolors, which act as living, conceptual anchors for each project. “I used to do pencil drawings. Those took eight hours,” reflected Steven Holl in a video I watched while researching. He continued, “Around 1979, I streamlined it to five-by-seven-inch watercolors. With the watercolor, in the quickest way, I can shape a volume, cast a shadow, indicate the direction of the sun in a very small format. And I can carry these things around because I am always traveling.”
Credits
Special thanks to everyone who helped bring this 2025 website vision to life: to Adriana Ramić, for expertly developing the website and providing guidance on design; to everyone on the SHA team, including Steven Holl, Dimitra Tsachrelia, Marisa Espe, Kelly Pope, and Yining He, for ongoing guidance and content expertise; and to Justin Goldberg, for development oversight. Additional thanks to designers Son La Pham, André Fuchs, Marie Otsuka, and Jake Dow Smith, who helped imagine the site anew.
