Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
Alternative Histories: Bovenbouw Architectuur on James Gowan
1 February 2019
Alternative Histories: Bovenbouw Architectuur on James Gowan1 February 2019
We had great fun elaborating on the cumulative aspect of James Gowan’s sketch. Gowan drew a procession of different structural features – a conga line of architectural fragments. We reinterpreted the idea on a vertical rather than horizontal axis. The conga line was turned into a tower-like stack. We embraced… Read More
Alternative Histories: De Vylder Vinck Taillieu on Michael Graves
31 January 2019
Alternative Histories: De Vylder Vinck Taillieu on Michael Graves31 January 2019
Jan de Vylder records that as a child Michael Graves was given a set of painted building blocks by his uncle. The set was made of wooden offcuts found around the yard where the young architect grew up; they remained with him throughout his career. From: Jan De Vylder Sent:… Read More
Alternative Histories: Hugh Strange Architects on Carlo Scarpa
31 January 2019
Alternative Histories: Hugh Strange Architects on Carlo Scarpa31 January 2019
Approximately A1-landscape in size, Carlo Scarpa’s drawing shows a series of studies of an unbuilt theatre project from 1970. A coloured, elevational sketch suggesting a masonry wall cut with slot-like or nearly-rounded apertures, inset with a lighter, framed structure, dominates the drawing. Our eyes are drawn to the details: a… Read More
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Mark Dorrian in conversation with Michael Webb, Episode 3
21 January 2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Mark Dorrian in conversation with Michael Webb, Episode 321 January 2019
– Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
The third episode of Michael Webb’s conversation with Mark Dorrian resumes with the fate of the Sin Centre model. The piece is published to mark the entry of the first part of a new model of the Sin Centre into the Drawing Matter collection. The conversation took place on Wednesday,… Read More
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 2
21 January 2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 221 January 2019
– Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
Mark Dorrian: I’ve loaded some images – Michael, by the way, doesn’t know what’s coming up. After showing this, the drawing of the building, I thought it would be useful to show a couple of slides about the context in which this project then appeared. The Furniture Manufacturers Building is… Read More
Alternative Histories: Max Otto Zitzelsberger on Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti
17 January 2019
Alternative Histories: Max Otto Zitzelsberger on Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti17 January 2019
Building upon Building Building upon buildings, drawing upon drawings, thinking upon thoughts. If this architectural drawing of Visconti has ever been realised, I do not know. In the end I am only interested in his architectural vision. Construction boards bear ideas and visions, before these become reality. They tell stories… Read More
Alternative Histories: Robbrecht en Daem Architecten on Le Corbusier
12 January 2019
Alternative Histories: Robbrecht en Daem Architecten on Le Corbusier12 January 2019
A Rain of Light It is our true belief that light is particles of dust. When light is driven through impurities it intensifies, and we assign it a mineral quality. We feel empowered by the ‘photon theory of light’ by Albert Einstein. – Robbrecht en Daem Architecten, January 2019
Alternative Histories: Jonathan Sergison on Carlos Diniz
12 January 2019
Alternative Histories: Jonathan Sergison on Carlos Diniz12 January 2019
Carlos Diniz’s drawing for Hillrise Apartments represents of another architect’s work. Who this may have been remains unclear. Interpreting the work of others is a common aspect of developing architectural ideas; our many collaborators add to projects through their drawings and models, constantly adjusting arrangements and proportions. On other occasions,… Read More
Alternative Histories: GAFPA on Superstudio
12 January 2019
Alternative Histories: GAFPA on Superstudio12 January 2019
We received a sketch made by Superstudio, the Italian architecture firm renowned for its conceptual architecture works.In the famous 1966 exhibition ‘Super Architecture’ the squared grid is used in a variety of scales from the simplest objects of furniture, such as a table, to an urban landscape.Through a series of… Read More
Alternative Histories: Olivier Goethal On Paul Rudolph
6 January 2019
Alternative Histories: Olivier Goethal On Paul Rudolph6 January 2019
YOU CLOSE, YOU OPENYOU OPEN, YOU CLOSE model 1/20 & object 1/1.1952–2018. a reinterpretation of paul rudolph’s flaphouse. like a tiny temple, lifted from its surrounding. 400-800THz …a narrow window makes our observed reality.in gradient with colours of visible light. while reflecting the given context onto its surface,its structure expresses… Read More
Dance Dance Revolution
30 December 2018
Dance Dance Revolution30 December 2018
In 1788, the art theorist and critic Quatremère de Quincy devoted a long entry of the Encyclopédie méthodique to the arabesque, ‘forms of ornament that are often the most capricious, fantastical, and imaginary, whether in sculpture or painting, that architecture employs in the decoration of walls, panels, door-frames, pilasters, friezes, and sometimes even… Read More
Superstudio: In Yesterday’s Tomorrow
23 December 2018
Superstudio: In Yesterday’s Tomorrow23 December 2018
‘Metamorphoses become frequent when a culture does not have sufficient courage to commit suicide (to eliminate itself) and has no clear alternatives to offer either‘ – Adolfo Natalini Following social and economic upheaval, there is often a retreat to the home. Traditionally, the ‘home’ is identified with a site of… Read More
Alternative Histories: Tony Fretton Architects on Erik Gunnar Asplund
19 December 2018
Alternative Histories: Tony Fretton Architects on Erik Gunnar Asplund19 December 2018
We recognise modernism as a continuing program to find architecture for the present time, and Asplund’s work as part of its history. Our project is a thought experiment on the central aspects of architecture’s modernism – social responsibility in combination with freedom to work with current sensibilities. It has proceeded… Read More
OMA’S NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER
15 December 2018
OMA’S NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER15 December 2018
Since you have asked about the two small sketches from Luce van Rooy Gallery attributed to Zaha: they are my drawings from the very early stages of the Nederlands Dans Theater project. The original site was not in The Hague but in Scheveningen, just down the road near the beach.… Read More
Behind the Lines 8
4 December 2018
Behind the Lines 84 December 2018
Annette Berthe Schlegel, wife of Adalbert, mother of Mariana, Friedrich, Werner and Elmira, and grandmother to little Wilhelm and Lydia, died peacefully in her cherry wood bed at home in Marienstrasse, Stuttgart, on March 29th, 1812. Adalbert, a successful watchmaker, had held Annette dear, and two weeks after the funeral… Read More
Zaha Hadid
27 November 2018
Zaha Hadid27 November 2018
When, in January 1983, Peter Cook reviewed a recently held exhibition for Zaha Hadid’s 59 Eaton Place, he spoke of the resonance between the individual and their education in developing an architectural identity. [1] He pondered on the development of Hadid over that period, What if fate had led her… Read More
Mussolini and the Tomb of Augustus in the Spring of 1935
20 November 2018
Mussolini and the Tomb of Augustus in the Spring of 193520 November 2018
Fascist urban planning was animated by the fear that one might be looking at the wrong thing. Too many buildings from too many periods stopped vision from apprehending what ought to have interested it most, the monuments bequeathed to posterity by the classical past. Phrased differently: these monuments, or their… Read More
Theodore Conrad and Harvey Wiley Corbett
11 November 2018
Theodore Conrad and Harvey Wiley Corbett11 November 2018
– Jennifer Gray and Irene Sunwoo
The fragment of Theodore Conrad’s 1929 cardboard model of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873–1954) — featured in the current exhibition Model Projections at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia GSAPP — marks an early episode in the American model maker’s career and an experimental… Read More
Madelon Vriesendorp
4 November 2018
Madelon Vriesendorp4 November 2018
– Niall Hobhouse and Madelon Vriesdendorp
Excerpted from Madelon Vreisendop in conversation with Niall Hobhouse, RIBA, 2 July 2018
Behind the Lines 7
31 October 2018
Behind the Lines 731 October 2018
Mr. Tassie’s House On June 27th 1807 William Tassie scratched his long nose, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and finished off his letter to Alexander Wilson Esq of Messrs. Dunlop & Wilson, Booksellers of Glasgow: ‘I have been near a twelve month engaged with alterations in my house –… Read More
Madelon Vriesendorp and Rem Koolhaas at Van Rooy Gallery, 1980
23 October 2018
Madelon Vriesendorp and Rem Koolhaas at Van Rooy Gallery, 198023 October 2018
– Editors
On 1 October 1980, at the height of postmodernism, Luce van Rooy opened her gallery in Amsterdam, around the corner from the Stedelijk Museum. [1] In a recent interview van Rooy reflects on the history of the gallery: the idea — what she calls a gallery for ‘architecture and related… Read More
Behind the Lines 9
2 February 2019
Behind the Lines 92 February 2019
– Philippa Lewis
Cyril Ponsonby walked anxiously from where he was staying in Wilbury Road, Hove over to the Hotel Metropole on the Brighton sea front. It was 1907, a sunny day in early August. He was hot and bothered. Under his arm he held a sheaf of papers. He went through the… Read More
presentation publication urban form behind the lines (series) creative writing DMC topographic/cartographic