The Reach: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Named America's Best Architect by Time magazine in 2001 "for buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye," Steven Holl is known for an experimental approach to architecture that is at once romantic, humanistic, and resplendently modern. Ranging across the globe, his multifarious body of work-including the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland; Beijing Looped Hybrid, an apartment complex in China; and the highly anticipated Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City-demonstrates a profound appreciation for the subtleties, power, and possibilities implicit in the materials of his trade: light, space, form; concrete, steel, glass. Marked by what has been called a "unique husbandry of space" (Time), Holl's work invites the participation of the observer in a joyful celebration of light and shadow, a festival in which movement becomes integral, where clouds passing through the night sky interact with shifting planes of heaven-bound glass. Steven Holl: Architecture Spoken offers the reader unprecedented access to the thought processes and work of this groundbreaking, cutting-edge architect through his own words-and more than 300 sumptuously photographed illustrations.