Provenance
Ryoko Itakura, New York
Thence by descent to the present owner
Literature
Yukio Futagawa, ed., Steven Holl, GA Architect no. 11, Tokyo, 1993, pp. 32-33 for architectural drawings, p. 35 for a sketch
Catalogue Essay
The following three lots are from the apartment that Steven Holl designed for Ryoko Itakura in 1986-1987. The siting and profile of the Museum Tower in which it is located informed the design of the apartment around what GA Architect explained as the “X, Y and Z directions.” Understood as axial lines, dimensions or simply through the shapes of the letters themselves, they formed the relational basis for the apartment’s plan and interior elements; as GA states they were presented “in a variety of ways- literal, poetic, systematic, intuitive.” This concept is readily apparent in the present three works: a floor lamp fixed to both floor and ceiling, a pair of bedside tables and a “corner” wall light. Conceived in an intensely site-specific fashion, each work demonstrates its own internal logic and self-referenced proportion.

In the same year and for the same client, Holl also designed the Giada shop at 904 Madison Avenue. At the time New York Magazine called the space as “dazzling as a gemstone and just as calculatingly cut,” succinctly describing the clarity of Holl’s work, as evident in the present lots as it is anywhere else.

Property from the Estate of Ryoko Itakura

Steven Holl

Pole lamp, from Museum Tower, New York

1986-1987
Patinated metal.
107 1/2 in. (273.1 cm) high

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000

Sold for $8,125

Contact Specialist
Cordelia Lembo
Specialist, Head of Sale
+1 212 940 1265

New York Auction 6 June 2017