The first thoughts of Steven Holl (Bremerton, Washington, 1947) are always captured in thick paper notebooks with sure brushstrokes in watercolor; deft essays on forms and spaces that the architect visualizes, in which color and light are never merely incidental concerns. It is in this liquid manner that he has created an oeuvre centered on buildings of civic importance where a determination to pay close attention to how buildings are perceived comes to the fore, as in the three works featured here, all of them in American cities: a library in New York and the additions to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.