Steven Holl

The first edition of the Frontiers of Knowledge and Culture awards, presented by the Fundación BBVA with the collaboration of the CSIC, has chosen the American architect Steven Holl as winner in the Arts category. The jury, formed by five musicians and two architects – Antón García-Abril and Ramón Sanabria – cited the vanguard vocation of Holl in over thirty years of professional practice, as well as the humanistic values preserved in his work. Holl, who has recently completed the Linked Hybrid and the Vanke Center in China, and who is the author of buildings like the extension of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas (2007) or the MIT?Simmons Hall in Cambrigde (2001), declared feeling honored as an artist: “I believe the relationship of all the arts becomes especially patent in architecture, and it is in architecture that it finds its fullest expression”. The worth of the prize, along with specific nature of its categories – basic science, biomedicine, information technologies, ecology, contemporary music, climate change and development cooperation – turn it into one of the world’s most important.