Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
Alternative Histories: fala atelier on Louis Kahn
14 June 2019
Alternative Histories: fala atelier on Louis Kahn14 June 2019
Supreme efficiency. For the cost of one millimetre of pencil lead, a few careful shapes define the volume, its load-bearing structure, the metrics of the facades and the distinction between services and open areas. We thought five pillars would be enough, and that the rhythm of the elevations would benefit… Read More
Alternative Histories: Havana architectuur on Michael Webb
18 April 2019
Alternative Histories: Havana architectuur on Michael Webb18 April 2019
When asked to design a model based on one of Michael Webb’s illustrious drawings of the Sin Centre project for Leicester Square (London 1961) we immediately thought about our project for a 500 cars garage (in collaboration with L.U.S.T. architecten) at the edge of the town of Ghent, which is… Read More
Alternative Histories: BeL on Walter Pichler
15 April 2019
Alternative Histories: BeL on Walter Pichler15 April 2019
The selected drawing – a light-hearted but somewhat nervous sketch bearing the title Sketch for Underground City – belongs to an early body of work by Walter Pichler. Working on abstract, hypothetical cities and buildings, Pichler questions the relationship of oppositional systems: positive and negative space, the designed and found object, movement… Read More
Alternative Histories: Smith and Taylor Architects on Erik Gunnar Asplund
10 April 2019
Alternative Histories: Smith and Taylor Architects on Erik Gunnar Asplund10 April 2019
Erik Gunnar Asplund’s 1921 drawing of the gable elevation of Karl Johan School presents a composed, formal, broadly classical and definitely Scandinavian façade. The potential symmetry of the façade is undermined by its off-centre presentation on the sheet, and by its constructed context: the profile of the hipped-roofed building on the left,… Read More
Alternative Histories: General Architecture on Emil Hoppe
21 March 2019
Alternative Histories: General Architecture on Emil Hoppe21 March 2019
Task We look upon the drawing of Emil Hoppe as a first draft of a building. The draft has travelled through time and it Is now our task to continue the work from our position. Continuation must be understood as something in between mere acceptance and rejection. For this task… Read More
Alternative Histories: Traumnovelle on Michael Gold
21 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Traumnovelle on Michael Gold21 March 2019
The Atom People The sublime despair of not belonging to our own planet’s ecosystems After the apocalypse, the overheated planet Earth is uninhabitable. Humankind creates a new underground city thanks to a machine producing infinite energy. People of this utopian city vow to learn from the errors of the past… Read More
Alternative Histories: Philip Christou on Le Corbusier
21 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Philip Christou on Le Corbusier21 March 2019
When asked to participate in ‘Alternative Histories’, I was pleased to be offered the large, elegant drawing by Le Corbusier of his proposal for the Bhakra Dam near Chandigarh, India. I remember seeing this drawing with Florian Beigel years ago in the Drawing Matter archive, and again in an important… Read More
Alternative Histories: Flores i Prats Architects on Alberto Ponis
20 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Flores i Prats Architects on Alberto Ponis20 March 2019
We have reflected directly on Alberto Ponis’s drawing without separating ourselves from it, looking for clues about where we could enter with the scissors and fold out the paper with our hands, making the house and the landscape that we saw drawn appear at the same time. We took the… Read More
Alternative Histories: Dow Jones Architects on Robbrecht en Daem
15 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Dow Jones Architects on Robbrecht en Daem15 March 2019
Our starting point is a drawing by Robbrecht en Daem dated 2000: a sketch in red ink of a small pavilion which sits on a platform and is approached by a path raised off the ground. The pitched roof and the space of the platform create a horizontal emphasis, and… Read More
Alternative Histories: Bernd Schmutz on Jules Hardouin-Mansart
14 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Bernd Schmutz on Jules Hardouin-Mansart14 March 2019
Tripartite Typology Instead of a particular style or authorship, Jules Hardouin Mansart’s drawing seems as if anonymous, characterised by a strong typological rigour. We have projected its composition of three double units into a deep roof volume with varying facades, gables and profiles, built as a painted model which explores… Read More
Alternative Histories: Doorzon Interieurarchitecten on Stefano de Martino
13 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Doorzon Interieurarchitecten on Stefano de Martino13 March 2019
– Stefanie Everaert and Caroline Lateur
The first things to catch our eye in the beautiful drawing by Stefano de Martino were three or four small brightly coloured surfaces integral to the composition, and its abstraction provided an advantage. Our search for spatial qualities made us transform the abstract drawing into a small, three-dimensional object –… Read More
Alternative Histories: NP2F Architectes on Mario Sironi
13 March 2019
Alternative Histories: NP2F Architectes on Mario Sironi13 March 2019
Mario Sironi’s work touched us in its relation to an elementary geometry. He participated with other artists and architects in the construction of a minimalist and sober aesthetic. We drew a parallel with a pragmatic approach to define our production – solving complex problems with simple moves and clear geometries.… Read More
Alternative Histories: Lütjens Padmanabhan On Michael Graves
9 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Lütjens Padmanabhan On Michael Graves9 March 2019
In our office we use a thermos tea pot designed by Michael Graves in 1994. The pot is a joyful, exuberant object made of greenish, bluish plastic. Because of its clunkiness, it remains visible in the midst of our office chaos; it has a presence in friendly dialogue with the models… Read More
Alternative Histories: Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor on Erik Gunnar Asplund
9 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor on Erik Gunnar Asplund9 March 2019
Model The cast-epoxy model developed from reflections on Gunnar Asplund’s work of the mid-1930s. The yellowish tone of the epoxy touches on the soft curvatures and almost bodily character of Asplund’s shapes during these years. Some of his shapes are interpreted as sensual membranes that may adjust to the structure,… Read More
Alternative Histories: Office Winhov on Burnham & Co.
9 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Office Winhov on Burnham & Co.9 March 2019
Conversation piece in blue Daniel Hudson Burnham’s buildings are based on a classical order of well-proportioned elements with a strict load-bearing tectonic expression – a familiar architectural language still spoken today. But, as with all languages, this tectonic language gradually transforms as the context in which it is spoken changes. The… Read More
Alternative Histories: Studio Thys Vermeulen on Sergison Bates
9 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Studio Thys Vermeulen on Sergison Bates9 March 2019
Folly The drawing we received was a pencil drawing showing a vertical elevation of Sergison Bates’s Tower House in Nutley. This proposal for a vertical country house, as explained by the architects, refers to the memory of an old water tower that stood on the same spot. Unlike the lightness… Read More
Zaha Hadid: Kurfürstendamm
8 March 2019
Zaha Hadid: Kurfürstendamm8 March 2019
This is all Zaha’s hand. When she is drawing there is a directionality – you are looking from the top, at a plan, extruded or in perspective. These sketches are relatively preliminary but certainly not initial – they are too defined. She is developing a composition, but already thinking about… Read More
Alternative Histories: Rloaluarnad on Mario Sironi
7 March 2019
Alternative Histories: Rloaluarnad on Mario Sironi7 March 2019
The model is a theatre within a city block. A small volkshuis, a fun palace – a public interior with the shed as its inspirator. Meeting wall to wall with its neighbours, the theatre is a black box within the city block; to the rear is a light, interchangeable structure, clad… Read More
Gowan and Stirling
1 March 2019
Gowan and Stirling1 March 2019
This odd-shaped, yellowed analysis drawing by James Gowan, drawn directly onto heavy paper isn’t dated, and was probably added to years after the drawing was nearly complete. Ellis Woodman describes the drawing as ‘that drawing that James always kept in the box with his sketchbooks’. Unusually, when I first saw… Read More
On Cornices, Part I
17 June 2019
On Cornices, Part I17 June 2019
– Emma Letizia Jones
In 1806, the civil servant Karl Tilebein and his wife were looking for an architect to design their new country house in Züllchow, Pomerania. They contacted the young Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who, having recently returned from a two-year grand tour of Italy, was back in Berlin eking out… Read More
section DMC elevation detail presentation domestic construction drawing Extracts: Women Writing Architecture