Steven Holl has gained international renown for what he calls "phenomenological architecture," buildings and spaces that are primarily about experience. His exacting attention to the play of light upon surfaces and the creation of spaces invite further investigation, and Holl's architecture has been compared to "a magnifying lens that lets us focus our senses on the fundamental elements."

Currently professor of architecture at Columbia University, Holl founded Steven Holl Architects in 1976. The firm first garnered acclaim for a series of interior renovations, as well as for Holl's writings in the influential Pamphlet Architecture. In the 1990s his firm designed an impressive number of critically and popularly acclaimed projects, ranging from the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University to Kiasma, Helsinki's Museum of Contemporary Art. Other projects include the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota; and Norway's Knut Hamsen Museum. Holl was chosen by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to design an expansion-the museum's first since opening in 1933. Holl has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Aalvar Aalto Medal in 1998, the National AIA Design Award in 1998 and 1995, and a Progressive Architecture award in 1997. In 1989 his work was presented in a two-man show by the New York Museum of Modern Art, and in 1991 the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis exhibited a solo show of his work in the series "Architecture Tomorrow."