Category: drawing techniques & materials
WilkinsonEyre
28 March 2018
WilkinsonEyre28 March 2018
This drawing presents a snapshot of the BIM model from the northern end of Battersea Power Station. Combined with a point cloud survey of the existing fabric, it overlays newer elements of construction with layers of the historic model. Careful selection of the information presented makes it possible to see… Read More
Niall McLaughlin
17 March 2018
Niall McLaughlin17 March 2018
ALZHEIMER’S RESPITE CENTRE, DUBLIN We had six sites to look at and we did a feasibility study for each one. We eventually ended up with one which in many ways is not very satisfactory for people with dementia because it is an eighteenth-century walled garden. But what we did was… Read More
Tony Fretton: Lisson Gallery 1
27 February 2018
Tony Fretton: Lisson Gallery 127 February 2018
84-7-1 is a singular image, a drawing of Lisson 1 seen from Lisson Street. It shows the back gallery as it was first intended – but which is not what it became, because the client kept buying land and adding to it. This sketch explores how a piece of architecture… Read More
Notes on the Sketchbook
19 February 2018
Notes on the Sketchbook19 February 2018
When we talk about the sketchbook what do we mean? Its complexity is reflected in the difficulty we experience – in many examples, at any rate – in straightforwardly attaching a name to it, for there are times it might seem to be equally a notebook, a journal, a diary,… Read More
Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten: Swiss Ambassador’s Residence
14 February 2018
Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten: Swiss Ambassador’s Residence14 February 2018
– Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Padmanabhan
There is an uncanny gap between the cold precision of a computer drawing and the confusing uncertainty of the design process. We try to bridge that gap with a collaborative method that includes a lot of discussions and the use of computer-prints, scalpel, glue, pencil and Tipp-Ex. The drawing above… Read More
Drawings’ Conclusions
8 February 2018
Drawings’ Conclusions8 February 2018
The Campo Marzio project had its origins in a series of drawings done as far back as 1979, when I was a student at Cooper Union. I entered Cooper as a transfer student with a BA already in hand. I was originally placed in second year, but after a semester… Read More
Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals
25 January 2018
Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals25 January 2018
The following text is excerpted from an interview with Hans Van der Laan and Antoine Bodar, broadcast by Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), 24 December 1988. Given that we have reduced architecture to proportions – to a matter of measurements, which is akin to solving a mathematical problem, the design has not been created visually. This… Read More
A Blueprint is… Blue
24 January 2018
A Blueprint is… Blue24 January 2018
A common error in looking at architectural drawings is to mistake mechanical reproductions for originals. Original and copy drawings both physically consist of two elements: the material (like ink) and the support (usually paper). But – and it may seem obvious to say – lines on paper are made by… Read More
Studio Mumbai: Saatrasta-Mahindra Tape Drawing
14 January 2018
Studio Mumbai: Saatrasta-Mahindra Tape Drawing14 January 2018
The idea of using tape drawings originated for climatic reasons: India goes through a five-month monsoon season each year, and during this time it is very humid. For us this meant that the drawings we were producing, which were printed on paper, had a very short lifespan. Lines would slowly… Read More
Yona Friedman: Space-chain Structures
11 January 2018
Yona Friedman: Space-chain Structures11 January 2018
‘Proteinic structures’, ‘proteinic chains’, ‘space chains’ and ‘iconostase’ are different names for similar structures, proposed and varied over the years by Yona Friedman. [1] They originally have in common a single material, metal, and a principle: the possibility of an infinite architecture. Such an unrealistic but visionary use of giant… Read More
William Butterfield
6 December 2017
William Butterfield6 December 2017
Nothing Permitted But What Has Been Foreseen William Butterfield eschewed the illustrative perspective, preferring instead to develop even his studies as contract drawings that would serve three tasks: as presentations through which a project could be comprehended, as instructions from which his contractors and clients could not swerve, and as… Read More
Herbert Matter
27 November 2017
Herbert Matter27 November 2017
This is the work of the Swiss photographer and designer Herbert Matter, who after a short career in New York had moved to California in 1943 with his wife, the American painter and art critic Mercedes Carles. Both were friends and associates of Fernand Leger, with whom Herbert had been… Read More
Dogma: The Room of One’s Own
13 November 2017
Dogma: The Room of One’s Own13 November 2017
– Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara
The Architecture of the Private Room These drawings are part of a series of 48 perspectives that depict the ‘private’ room from antiquity to the present day. They comprise a study of the private room as a specific architectural form. Each perspective is taken with a more or less consistent… Read More
The Clandeboye Drawings
27 October 2017
The Clandeboye Drawings27 October 2017
The seven Clandeboye drawings, each 35 × 35 cm and on A2 trace, were produced in 1984. The year is significant. Then the AA was busy maintaining a posture of indifference to Jenksian postmodernism, while the possibly visionary (at least in the case of architectural speculation) and certainly introspective 1970s… Read More
Aldo Rossi
30 September 2017
Aldo Rossi30 September 2017
In the spring of 1979 John Hejduk invited Aldo Rossi to teach at Cooper Union. I’m not certain when he met Rossi, but Rossi was crucial, I would say, to John’s last major shift in his work. He saw something in Rossi’s analogical project that would allow him to transition… Read More
Architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu
7 September 2017
Architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu7 September 2017
One cannot see these drawings without seeing the mural by Sol LeWitt, in which an electrician has subsequently installed doorbells and a light switch. The mural is in the entrance hall of a city palace that was for a time the entrance to a gallery. When the gallery stopped its… Read More
The Drawing as Actor
5 September 2017
The Drawing as Actor5 September 2017
In two publications about post-war reconstruction, How should we rebuild London? (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1945) and Die Stalinallee Nationales Aufbauprogramme (Verlag Der Nation Berlin, 1952), the planning ferment in London and Berlin becomes a performance in itself, revealed through the choice of the media and subjects which they each adopt for illustration.… Read More
E. S. Prior’s Architectural Modelling
2 August 2017
E. S. Prior’s Architectural Modelling2 August 2017
The very fact that The Builder should publish an article explaining the benefits, the uses and the methods of making architectural models indicates just how novel the concept was in 1895, even in theory. ‘Architecture Modelling’ was the result of the almost unprecedented display of an actual model at the Royal Academy… Read More
Enric Miralles: La Gran Casa
22 July 2017
Enric Miralles: La Gran Casa22 July 2017
Few projects better represent Enric Miralles’ first stance towards architectural drawing than his own final degree project, La Gran Casa (The Large House), which he worked on with Marciá Codinachs and submitted to the Barcelona School of Architecture in 1978. Seven drawings, each about the size of a bed sheet (118.80 × 237.60 cm), define… Read More
Charles Percier
17 July 2017
Charles Percier17 July 2017
A Clean Mess Cleanliness is a trait shared by many architects and Charles Percier was no exception. The charming anecdote is told of Percier, the son of a laundrywoman, going to great lengths to keep his sheets of drawing paper safe from the ubiquitous ash of his pipe. The architect… Read More
San Rocco
20 June 2017
San Rocco20 June 2017
This beautiful and black glossy image lies on top of the contrasting ground of a thick, white and matt-surfaced magazine binding. The substance of the drawing is not composed of lines but rather made of solid fields that recoil from each other, very neatly, to leave spaces. These slivers where… Read More
Karl Friedrich Schinkel
7 June 2017
Karl Friedrich Schinkel7 June 2017
In his designs for the Tilebein House, Schinkel makes considerable use of different colours corresponding to the nature of the materials depicted. To indicate iron he uses a darkish blue, for wood mostly yellow and, of course, when he wants to show cut masonry (he is building in brick), he… Read More
R. Norman Shaw
11 March 2018
R. Norman Shaw11 March 2018
– Andrew Saint
R. Norman Shaw (1831–1912) is commonly thought of as a domestic architect, but he built a fair number of churches, sixteen altogether, many of them original and remarkable in one way or another. There is an evolution in Shaw’s church designs from the emotional ardour of his earliest efforts, like… Read More
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