Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva
19.05.2021
Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva19.05.2021
For the curious visitor that approaches the historic remains of the Temple of Minerva Medica in Rome, it will take a lot of effort to contextualize the building as it could have once been. That which before had allowed for a gentle processional approach to the ruin has now been… Read More
Bovenbouw Architectuur: One Paper Model and Three Paper Collages
12.05.2021
Bovenbouw Architectuur: One Paper Model and Three Paper Collages12.05.2021
The layers found in Bovenbouw Architectuur’s collages are analogous to the layering in their architecture – there to be unravelled by those willing to search. Sometimes ruinous, never complete, they are a representation of uncanny worlds where chimneystacks become doors, tyres become classical pediments and windows are adorned with eyelashes.… Read More
Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)
11.05.2021
Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)11.05.2021
In 1918, when the First World War ended, Eric Gill was in his late forties and completing the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral. He was soon in demand to design and sculpt war memorials. Gill would create simple memorials listing the names of the fallen for both the… Read More
The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish
10.05.2021
The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish10.05.2021
A phenomenological reading of ‘bridge’ would not prioritise function (crossing) but this suspended moment. – Peter Wilson [1] A fish out of water, a lady in thought, floating ‘wilderness’. Things first have to be separated from each other so as to be united later on. [2] Peter Wilson’s drawings of… Read More
fala atelier: Seriously Playful
06.05.2021
fala atelier: Seriously Playful06.05.2021
Back in December 2018, I received an email with a pdf containing 8 compositions in 1:200 from fala atelier. These were ‘comprehensive drawings’ that they were experimenting with for their 2G publication. They simply wanted to know which I liked, and what I thought about them. Some differ from the… Read More
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review
04.05.2021
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review04.05.2021
In a series of essays and lectures developed between 1939 and 1943, the philosopher of science Edgar Zilsel identified three distinct sources of knowledge in the Renaissance. In the late-medieval period, writes Zilsel, the traditional learning associated with the universities was still theological and scholastic in character. The texts preserved… Read More
Insignificance 1: Discipline
04.05.2021
Insignificance 1: Discipline04.05.2021
The space of the architectural imagination resides within the discourses of line. This space defines the boundaries of a practice of conceptualising the laws of the place [1] whereby through an array of ordinances, the architectural line constitutes ‘the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically and to analyse… Read More
Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing
03.05.2021
Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing03.05.2021
The speed of transformation that characterises our contemporality is largely motivated by the development of the newest information technologies. The speed introduced by computation seems to be the promoter of the instability that reaches the conceptions of almost all professional and disciplinary fields since it imposes a pace of change… Read More
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)
03.05.2021
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)03.05.2021
This text is an excerpt from Mikhail Bulgakov’s series of short vignettes that appeared under the overarching title ‘Golden City’ and were serialised in the Berlin-based Russian migrant ‘Nakanune’ newspaper between 30 September and 14 October 1923. Bulgakov was commissioned to write an account of the first and only All-Russian… Read More
The Beaux-Arts Tradition
29.04.2021
The Beaux-Arts Tradition29.04.2021
– Basile Baudez and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger
The following text has been excerpted from Living with Architecture as Art, the recently published catalogue of Peter May’s collection of drawings, models and architectural artefacts. The catalogue is edited by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger and published in two generously illustrated volumes. The first volume includes essays by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Basile Baudez,… Read More
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness
27.04.2021
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness27.04.2021
– Editors
With thanks to Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this tribute to Sekine written on the first anniversary of the artist’s death (linked here).
Open Wide / Wide Open
22.04.2021
Open Wide / Wide Open22.04.2021
We started with six words: a short-term dwelling for an artist then added: with a child What adaptations have you made to your domestic space since having a child? / What adaptations have you made to your work space since having a child? / How / When / Where do… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 11: Architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck
19.04.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 11: Architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck19.04.2021
– Fabrizio Gallanti, Inge Vinck and Jan De Vylder
This is the eleventh in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio interviews Jan De Vylder and Inge Vinck about their teaching… Read More
Physical & Digital Drawing
19.04.2021
Physical & Digital Drawing19.04.2021
When we use a Computer Aided Design (CAD) programme we invoke the act of drawing as we draw the mouse around on the desk. The cursor is drawn across the screen, albeit with a level of discontinuity as the lines of code convert the signals of the optical sensor into… Read More
The Architecture of Nothingness: Analysing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple
12.04.2021
The Architecture of Nothingness: Analysing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple12.04.2021
The Architecture of Nothingness: Drawing the Drawings As architects we have learned to read drawings almost instantly. At a glance we see what the spaces feel like, what it will be like to move around the building and perhaps even get a sense of the appropriateness of the structure. This ‘presentational’ way… Read More
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics
12.04.2021
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics12.04.2021
It is the unique trait of the section drawing to fragment the singularity of built form, to allow the reading of a building as a series of individual pieces, and thereby delay our innate predilection for gestalt. Much like an erratic (in geology, an erratic is a material moved by geologic forces from… Read More
Balzac architecte (1856)
09.04.2021
Balzac architecte (1856)09.04.2021
No drawing, nor stone in the ground, remains of the dream house near Paris which the young novelist was never able to complete. By the time Balzac resold the whole property in 1840, with debts of 100,000 francs, it had collapsed back into the landscape, together with the terraced plantations… Read More
Remembering a House in an Indiana Cornfield
31.03.2021
Remembering a House in an Indiana Cornfield31.03.2021
Dear Nicholas, It was wonderful to connect to your seminar and with you. We must catch up soon. I learned a lot from your presentation. And it brought back a flood of memories. Just now I quickly sketched the open plan house my father designed and had built in 1946,… Read More
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): Review & Excerpts
30.03.2021
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): Review & Excerpts30.03.2021
Review Making a book about making a building creates a special narrative challenge in the constant battle between reality and myth that vibrates through non-fiction publications and the ways in which we as readers engage with and interpret them. This is complicated even more when making a book about a… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 10: Studio Othenin-Girard
29.03.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 10: Studio Othenin-Girard29.03.2021
This is the tenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode, Guillaume Othenin-Girard discusses his studio at the University of Hong Kong which explored… Read More
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield
26.03.2021
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield26.03.2021
The Site Plan was one of the Planning drawings prepared for submission to Chelmsford District Council and Essex County Council. It is A1 size and drawn on Wiggins Teape 112 gram ‘Gateway’ tracing paper. The East Hanningfield job was the first on which ‘A’ sized paper had been used in… Read More
Cedric Price: Urban Spaceman
22.03.2021
Cedric Price: Urban Spaceman22.03.2021
Laid down facing upwards and spread evenly on a neutral surface, 13 tin toys pose for a shot. Cedric Price’s robot collection – battery powered or clockwork, says the caption – includes a mechanical bird and rabbit, several spaceships, spacemen and robots. Their distinctive features intimate specific names, makers and… Read More
Insignificance 2: Distinction – Polysemy
19.05.2021
Insignificance 2: Distinction – Polysemy19.05.2021
– Gordon Shrigley
The following texts are excerpted from Gordon Shrigley, Insignificance: A short discourse on the physical and ideational economy of line within architectural representation (Solitude Editions, 1998). Now, twenty years after Insignificance was first published, Gordon Shrigley has revisited the publication for a series of postings on Drawing Matter. Each of these posts connect… Read More
insignificance (editorial series) DMC