The script of viscosity: the phenomenal experience in Steven Holl's museum architecture

Abstract

While some architects have adopted complex free-flowing forms as a response to the universalisation of modernism, the American architect Steven Holl has taken a different approach that concentrates on a phenomenology of architecture. His museum designs focus on constructing a phenomenal experience from multiple perspectives for visitors to engage in a body-subject experience. To explore the notion of spatial viscosity in Holl's architecture, the space syntax method of justified graphs (j-graphs) is used to examine three museums: the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and the Knut Hamsun Centre in Hamarøy. The analysis discovers that despite the vast differences in scale and layout among the museums, they exhibit remarkable similarities in terms of spatial configuration and strategy in the formation of the continuously unfolding spatial sequence.