Architect: Alison Smithson
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once
20 October 2023
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once20 October 2023
In this film Stephen Bates discusses a group of drawings by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Upper Lawn Pavilion, dating from the late 1950s when the Smithsons bought the site, and the 1970s when the architects proposed several alterations—only some of which were realised. Stephen Bates’ relationship with the… Read More
Alison and Peter Smithson’s Collages as Reinventing Established Reality
24 February 2023
Alison and Peter Smithson’s Collages as Reinventing Established Reality24 February 2023
Alison and Peter Smithson often introduced figures that were protagonists in the news, such as Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, French actor Gérard Philipe, and the first prime minister of Independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru into their architectural drawings for social housing projects—as in the case of their collages for the… Read More
Hexenhaus (2021) – Review
27 June 2022
Hexenhaus (2021) – Review27 June 2022
‘THE FOREST THAT BUILT THE HOUSE’ There are two drawings for me that are significant in understanding the work of the Smithsons. Both are of Upper Lawn [1]. One is a drawing made by Peter Smithson of their Solar Pavilion in elevation, the other by Alison Smithson in plan. The… Read More
Jesús Vassallo’s Epics in the Everyday (2019): Review & Excerpt
14 June 2021
Jesús Vassallo’s Epics in the Everyday (2019): Review & Excerpt14 June 2021
Review The compelling question of reality, or rather its representation as realism presented as an aesthetic category, acts as the organising principle of this interesting book. This is an investigation of the relationship between photography, architecture and the problem of realism, as its subtitle explains. Its author, Jesús Vassallo, immediately… Read More
Jessie Brennan
4 January 2017
Jessie Brennan4 January 2017
An image These drawings are an act of imagination. Like stills from the filmed footage of a detonation, in each frame a building slumps further down the viewfinder: present, going, going… gone. Or so it seems. On closer inspection, it emerges that the building is still there. It is in… Read More