Category: on their own work

Yacht Club Path

Yacht Club Path

Alberto Ponis

I The drawings have different stories. They don’t have a linear story, a beginning date and then a finished date at the end. Sometimes they are drawn in the beginning before the project is built and then continue during the construction of the project and sometimes too – actually, quite often… Read More

Onto an Epicycle of Cones

Onto an Epicycle of Cones

Mark Ericson

This drawing is part of a series that interrogates the orthographic drawing techniques of Guarino Guarini (1624–1683) set out in his posthumous treatise, Architettura civile, (1737). While some of the drawings from the series deal with the direct documentation of his orthographic drawings, this particular drawing translates his written and drawn instructions… Read More

Foster + Partners: Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus

Foster + Partners: Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus

Norman Foster

Following on from Farshid Moussavi’s curatorial decision to create a display of construction drawings that showcase the ‘full complexity of the different systems and parts of buildings’, I chose this compelling BIM drawing from the Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus project, which suitably illustrates our integrated design approach. Throughout the… Read More

Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects

Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects

Toyo Ito

The catenoidal structures of the National Taichung Theatre unfold their space both vertically and laterally, forming the continuous interior space-tubes for the theatrical venue — named ‘Sound Caves’. Our design theme for this building was, from the planning to construction period, to conceive of the structural and mechanical arrangement along… Read More

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