From Pagan Kennedy’s article in New York Times Magazine’s special issue about architecture, Big Sponge on Campus, about architect Steven Holl’s M.I.T. dormitory:
[…] M.I.T. hired a maverick architect, Steven Holl, to create a groundbreaking design. He says his inspiration for the building was a sea sponge. [–––]
“We inherited a master plan that was a large brick wall,” Holl says. He wanted, instead, to create a building that was an antiwall, full of gaps so that you could see through to the community beyond the campus. “I went out and bought sea sponges for everyone who was working on the building,” he says, in order to help them think porous.
Team alignment; idea generation.