Category: drawing techniques & materials
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
Diagrams: Hans van der Heijden in Conversation with Richard Hall
05.05.2021
Diagrams: Hans van der Heijden in Conversation with Richard Hall05.05.2021
Hans van der Heijden is an Amsterdam-based architect. He co-founded biq in 1994 with Rick Wessels before establishing his own office, Hans van der Heijden Architect, in 2014. During this timeframe he has developed a recognisable and idiosyncratic drawing repertoire, the origins of which can be traced back to his… Read More
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing
26.04.2021
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing26.04.2021
How we look at architectural drawings is an inherently complicated topic. The issue arises from what we understand to appear and disappear on the page. The field of architecture has spent little time talking about what we see (and don’t see) on the surface of the drawing itself. One could… Read More
Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)
26.04.2021
Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)26.04.2021
Filmed in 1964, Ron Parks’ documentary on the newly completed Engineering Department at Leicester catches James Stirling and James Gowan at a moment of professional triumph and personal crisis. Their building was being applauded the world-over – Parks’ film had been commissioned by the American Institute of Architects, to mark its… Read More
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material
21.04.2021
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material21.04.2021
– Editors
The following quotations are from ‘Mein Stoff für Fassaden (My Facade Material)’, a lecture delivered online by Peter Märkli to open a series of five talks for the Architecture Foundation. The quotations are presented here in a loose fashion, some treated as aphorisms about design, others illustrated with drawings from… 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
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
Place and Displacement: Rubbings from Architecture
12.04.2021
Place and Displacement: Rubbings from Architecture12.04.2021
The process of making a rubbing transcends the traditional boundaries of architectural draughtsmanship and illustration. A rubbing is made by placing a sheet of paper over an object or textured surface and burnishing its surface with a drawing medium such as graphite or charcoal. Many of us might associate the… Read More
Hans Hollein: From a Distance
07.04.2021
Hans Hollein: From a Distance07.04.2021
On a page of Hans Hollein’s sketchbook, a cluster of adobe buildings climb slowly and modestly above the horizon, seeming to rise out of the earth. The sketch, produced in 1960 during the Austrian architect’s exploration of the western United States, feels unorthodox for Hollein, whose proclivity for radical, anti-Functionalist… 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
André Arbus: Details Matter
29.03.2021
André Arbus: Details Matter29.03.2021
These presentation drawings – polished, finished, complete – were drawn by André Arbus in the 1950s. They are of a compact, open-plan apartment. Although they are not design drawings, they reveal a lot about the process of design. They communicate thought and care and suggest many drawings have come before them.… 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
Studio Mumbai’s Tape Drawing
25.03.2021
Studio Mumbai’s Tape Drawing25.03.2021
Rain falls from the sky as a five-month monsoon season sweeps across India. Often associated with abundance and blessing, rain is a sign of good prospects, particularly for Southwest Indian farmers who are dependent on rainfall for their crops. The Saatrasta-Mahindra tape drawing embodies the term ‘adapting to place’, as… Read More
Marie-José Van Hee: Seeing not Showing
22.03.2021
Marie-José Van Hee: Seeing not Showing22.03.2021
‘House’ by Marie-José Van Hee is drawn on a sheet of trace, the edge of which is visible at the top, offset from the plain white ground for photographing or scanning. It is a freehand drawing that uses black graphite for lines, to hatch, shade, and achieve gradations of roughly rendered… Read More
Haunted: Robert Smithson’s ‘My House is a Decayed House’
18.03.2021
Haunted: Robert Smithson’s ‘My House is a Decayed House’18.03.2021
The following text is excerpted from Dr. Suzaan Boettger’s research for her book in process, The Passions of Robert Smithson, Art and Life. Follow her on Instagram @NatrCultr, where images are tagged #UnknownSmithson. ‘History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors.’ If the sardonic analogy sounds like Robert Smithson, you’re close: it was written by his favorite… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 8: Patrick Lynch
16.03.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 8: Patrick Lynch16.03.2021
This is the eighth 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 we share Instagram posts by Patrick Lynch in which he describes his experience… Read More
Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things
08.03.2021
Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things08.03.2021
The following text was first published in The Library: Glasgow School of Art (2014), edited by Mark Baines, John Barr and Christopher Platt. The text describes Paul Clarke’s process of surveying Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s library at the Glasgow School of Art, which he undertook in 1993. When the library was… Read More
Make me Hyper-Real: Image Ethics and the Architectural Visualisation
05.03.2021
Make me Hyper-Real: Image Ethics and the Architectural Visualisation05.03.2021
Architectural visualisations sell us the image of a new reality. In depicting a building that is designed, rather than completed, they constitute a kind of spatial hypothesis: a temptation of a happier, wealthier, and more connected world. By constructing these fictions through the means of the image, they sell us the notion that the project it depicts will improve our lives for the better. … Read More
The Perpetual Race of Piranesi and the Tortoise
01.03.2021
The Perpetual Race of Piranesi and the Tortoise01.03.2021
Melting reality, ancient history and fantasy into one, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi hold an unparalleled allure that continues to entrance and captivate. They offer an escape into imagined and unknown worlds; each drawing an organism of its own, containing an immense depth of spatial layering and an extraordinary… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 7: MOS
25.02.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 7: MOS25.02.2021
– Fabrizio Gallanti, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample
This is the seventh 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 Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of the New York-based… 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
– Ciaran Scannell
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
projection (axonometric isometric) exhibition public space