Category: on their own work

Elizabeth Hatz: Line, Light, Locus

Elizabeth Hatz: Line, Light, Locus

Elizabeth Hatz

This is a Drawing Room, a with-drawing room. It is simply a love-declaration to the architectural drawing. Four walls, three large doorways. One end calmer, the other more open. The first thing decided is a table-bench; the drawing flat on the tabletop – like when you draw it – and… Read More

Alexander Brodsky: The Shed

Alexander Brodsky: The Shed

Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House

Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House

Mogens Prip-Buus

Somebody said the story about the orange is not right, but it is: he sent one of us over to the shop to buy an orange and he peeled it and took up the segments. Mogens Prip-Buus on Jørn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House

David Kohn Architects

David Kohn Architects

David Kohn

These two drawings of the Hounslow gate, however, belong to a different kind of drawing, which happens less frequently, possible only every few months. It often happens at a moment in the design process when progress is slowing, the range of issues we are exploring seems too restricted, a sense… Read More

Adolfo Natalini: The Last Supper

Adolfo Natalini: The Last Supper

Dominique Perrault Architecte

Dominique Perrault Architecte

Dominique Perrault

Pavilion Dufour, Château de Versailles, Developed Horizontal Wood Blades, Wall Covering began as a working document, resulting from the exchanges and developments between the acoustician, my team and the company engaged to build the acoustical panels covering the walls of the auditorium. This document immediately caught my attention because it seemed… Read More

Nicholas Grimshaw

Nicholas Grimshaw

Nicholas Grimshaw

This axonometric of the Arthur Phillip High School illustrates the very inner workings of the building. Stripped bare of its materiality – the steel and concrete frame, the inner and outer facades and interior finishes – to reveal the network of elements which make the building come alive. These vital… Read More

Clancy Moore Architects: Conversation Pieces

Clancy Moore Architects: Conversation Pieces

Colm Moore

I have seen the photographs. Architect couples sketching side by side, a shared arm at work. We do not work like this. We sit on opposite sides of a table. This is not to set up some easy argument of oppositions. Instead it is intended to enable a conversation. Generally an existing drawing is… Read More

Eurolandschaft Dérive

Eurolandschaft Dérive

Peter Wilson

The format is Japanese: a concertina sketchbook presented empty to me by Akira Suzuki shortly after the 1983 completion of our Tokyo Suzuki House design. The drawing format is also Japanese – influenced by our reading of Tokyo (documented in Western Objects + Eastern Fields, AA 1989). Tokyo is difficult for… Read More

WilkinsonEyre

WilkinsonEyre

Chris Wilkinson

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

Niall McLaughlin

Níall McLaughlin

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

G. E. Street: Drawing on Moulding

G. E. Street: Drawing on Moulding

Take Courage

Take Courage

Freddie Phillipson

Architecture is born of experience, yet its realisation depends in no small measure on belief. Most buildings owe their existence primarily to evidence – the demonstrable proofs of the benefits they provide – for intuition must always be interrogated to justify the confidence placed in the architect. But the mysterious… Read More

AL_A: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter

AL_A: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter

Amanda Levete

Farshid Moussavi’s brief for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition asked for representations of the complexities of designing and realising buildings and structures. We illustrated this by overlaying each level of intervention in a different colour – from the existing V&A stonework in green, the services in purple, to the… Read More

Tony Fretton: Lisson Gallery 1

Tony Fretton: Lisson Gallery 1

Tony Fretton

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

Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron

A pair of drawings – a plan and a still image from a digital model – act like X-rays revealing the hidden forces at play in a complex project that brings together public and private uses including concert halls, plazas, restaurants, hotel functions, and residences, all in one building. The… Read More

Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten: Swiss Ambassador’s Residence

Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten: Swiss Ambassador’s Residence

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

Drawings’ Conclusions

Stan Allen

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

Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals

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

Florian Beigel & Kisa Kawakami

Florian Beigel & Kisa Kawakami

Florian Beigel and Philip Christou

Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Yokohama, Japan, 1994 The 500-metre-long, gently sloping body of the new pier lifts itself up over the water. It glows from the inside like the body of a transparent fish with all its internal organs visible. A model was made with clear perspex and… Read More

Studio Mumbai: Saatrasta-Mahindra Tape Drawing

Studio Mumbai: Saatrasta-Mahindra Tape Drawing

Studio Mumbai Bijoy Jain

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

The Sacred Games of Art

The Sacred Games of Art

Patrick Lynch

These images show a series of buildings and public spaces designed over the past decade on Victoria Street, some made intuitively in meetings, others in contemplation, and others as a way to try to communicate something. They also formed part of my PhD submission, and so are sometimes attempts to… Read More

Assemble: Collective Authorship

Assemble: Collective Authorship

Giles Smith and Adam Willis

Assemble’s practice was established in 2010 through a collective desire to build together, and our first projects were largely designed on site as we went. Our practice has been and remains organised cooperatively, without hierarchy, and our design methodologies have been developed to accommodate that particular dynamic. We use large-scale… Read More

Dogma: The Room of One’s Own

Dogma: The Room of One’s Own

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