Category: design methodologies
The Lost Art of Drawing
04.11.2015
The Lost Art of Drawing04.11.2015
The following has been excerpted from Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing, New York Times, 2012. I personally like to draw on translucent … tracing paper, which allows me to layer one drawing on top of another, building on what I’ve drawn before, and again, creating a personal, emotional connection… Read More
Dismantled Sketchbook
02.11.2015
Dismantled Sketchbook02.11.2015
To some extent this is the battleground of the British architectural avant-garde; the incompatibilities of graphics and architecture, the freedom that the former allows and the restrictions that the latter asserts. In recent years, the graphics have got smoother whilst the dialectic has remained largely unresolved. A conclusive project is… Read More
A Life of Their Own (1985)
28.08.2015
A Life of Their Own (1985)28.08.2015
The following has been excerpted from Staying Creative; Artistic Passion is a Lifelong Pursuit – and These Mature Masters Prove the Point. (Otto Luening, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Rudolph), December 1985. I try to find a graphic means of indicating what’s happening to the space. Space can move quickly or slowly. It… Read More
John Lautner: House and Studio for Edgar Ewing
28.08.2015
John Lautner: House and Studio for Edgar Ewing28.08.2015
On presenting himself as a potential apprentice at Taliesin to Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., Lautner heard no objection except the sly comment that he would be ‘too big for the rooms’. Everything about his approach to visualising a design speaks to the distance from which this towering figure saw the… Read More
History & Origins
21.08.2015
History & Origins21.08.2015
And these old drawings […] now have their own history, an almost enforced form of composition. And yet I wonder at the fact that they are the origin or germ of these new architectural works, which others could regard as more professional. In actual fact, invention and imagination have deeper… Read More
The Hatred of Rendering (1930)
01.08.2015
The Hatred of Rendering (1930)01.08.2015
The following has been extracted from a lecture delivered in Brazil in 1930. I should like to give you the hatred of rendering … Architecture is in space, in extent, in depth, in height: it is volumes and circulation. Architecture is made inside one’s head. The sheet of paper is… Read More
Sketch from Vézelay from Letter to Mérimée (1843)
31.07.2015
Sketch from Vézelay from Letter to Mérimée (1843)31.07.2015
From a letter to Mérimée written in 1843 from Vézelay: You, Sir, who have ceaselessly lived the life of the past, you understand the joy, the secret happiness felt when we can record in our sketchbook some of these forgotten [historical] treasures … but how much more interesting when these… Read More
Five Boxes
10.06.2015
Five Boxes10.06.2015
Line drawing — drawing without shading, cross-hatching or chiaroscuro — permits and conveys the most precise sense of accuracy of any kind of drawing. The facts are laid bare, nothing can be fudged or obscured. Leonardo used line drawing for his studies of everything from flying machines to the human… Read More
James Gowan: The Expandable House
01.11.2015
James Gowan: The Expandable House01.11.2015
– Markus Lähteenmäki
James Gowan and James Stirling, first as partners (1956–1963) and then in their own practices, reworked the ideas of composition both in plan and section, often echoing alternative Modernist sources, such as those of the Soviet avant-garde. They looked for new ways to forge connections between programme and form, and… Read More
DMC sketch plan section projection (axonometric isometric) theoretical & imaginary domestic