Quote of Note | Steven Holl

“In China, if I say, ‘This has never been done before,’ they get very excited. When we did a hybrid of a cable stay and a rigid concrete frame for the Shenzhen ‘horizontal skyscraper’ [Vanke Center, 2006-09, pictured]—spanning 50 meters between eight cores—they were very excited to do it. This would never happen in America. When I propose something here, they usually say, ‘Have you ever done this before? We’re worried about this. Can you show us some examples?’ The mindset here is conservative, provincial.