Category: on their own work
The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
1 August 2016
The Marriage of Reason and Squalor1 August 2016
The Marriage of Reason and Squalor is a set of drawings I’ve produced since 2001. They are an investigation into what, in the absence of a better definition, I’ve called ‘non-compositional architecture’. Since the very beginning, I’ve conceived of these drawings as something to be executed by the simplest of means,… Read More
The Birth of the Column
7 April 2016
The Birth of the Column7 April 2016
The following text is excepted from an interview with Kate Goodwin, in: Sensing Spaces, Architecture Reimagined, Royal Academy of Arts, 2014. All drawings are by Álvaro Siza, 2013–2014, for the design, placement and installation of three columns in precast yellow concrete, first in the courtyard of Burlington House and then in… Read More
Robert Mylne
1 April 2016
Robert Mylne1 April 2016
There are two sons of Deacon Mylne’s in Rome at present, studying architecture. One of them had studied in France and has accordingly that abominable taste to perfection: the other, who came straight from Scotland, has made great progress and begins to draw extremely well, so that if he goes… Read More
Etudes des fragments d’architecture
6 March 2016
Etudes des fragments d’architecture6 March 2016
Signed and dated ‘à Rome 1777’, this drawing was one of a series of studies executed after the antique by Jean-Augustin Renard when a student in Rome, and later published in Paris in Etudes des fragments d’architecture (1783). The acanthus leaf is ubiquitous in Western ornament. Supremely versatile, it can be deployed… Read More
Hans Hollein: Everything is Architecture
4 March 2016
Hans Hollein: Everything is Architecture4 March 2016
The following has been excerpted from ‘Everything is Architecture’, Bau Magazine, 1968. Limited and traditional definitions of architecture and its means have lost their validity. Today the environment as a whole is the goal of our activities—and all the media of its determination: TV or artificial climate, transportation or clothing, telecommunication… Read More
Hans Hollein: Infinite Space
4 March 2016
Hans Hollein: Infinite Space4 March 2016
Between 1959 and 1964, the sculptor and designer Walter Pichler (1936–2012) and the architect Hans Hollein (1934–2014), working in dialogue, introduced a radically adventurous new plasticity to form, questioning the functional idea of architecture as shelter and its symbolic role as monument, as well as calling for the architect to… Read More
To Read A Drawing (1983)
12 February 2016
To Read A Drawing (1983)12 February 2016
What is it to read a drawing? Traditionally, we read writing and see drawing. But if we transgress that custom, then we accrue to drawing the privilege of the autonomy of the reader. If we limited ourselves to seeing drawings as drawings then there would be no possibility of unhooking… Read More
The Continuous Monument
5 February 2016
The Continuous Monument5 February 2016
My sketchbooks show a really typical project called the Continuous Monument. The Monument was a demonstration of the falsity and the absurdity of some of the theories that went on in that period. We started producing images of this sort of continuous monument, the continuous strip of urbanisation which was… Read More
On Drawing
4 February 2016
On Drawing4 February 2016
When I was very young I wanted to be an artist; I wanted to be a painter, and I started making paintings. Quite successfully: once, I sold a painting and bought a Fiat Cinquecento with this money. Impossible for me now, even if I complete a fairly big project. But… Read More
Becoming One with the Landscape (1969)
15 January 2016
Becoming One with the Landscape (1969)15 January 2016
The following is excerpted from Two Continuous Monuments, by Nicholas Olsberg. Published in the AA Files No. 71, 2015. The architect’s guiding idea has been to create a building which would ‘literally tend to disappear – becoming one with the landscape’ … The dramatic architectural concept and primarily coniferous flora… Read More
Michael Webb: Sin Centre
5 December 2015
Michael Webb: Sin Centre5 December 2015
The first thing you will notice about the Sin Centre, or Entertainments Centre as it was initially called, is that it lacks entertainments. Pour over the plans, but you will find no drawing lines suggesting the presence of a bowling alley or a restaurant or even a theatre. I forgot… Read More
View the action, neck or talk (1965)
4 December 2015
View the action, neck or talk (1965)4 December 2015
All this can, and is meant to happen on the parking ramps of the Sin Centre: couples bring along their own mobile living room and view the action, neck or talk.
A Lung for the City (1984)
27 November 2015
A Lung for the City (1984)27 November 2015
The following has been excerpted from Cedric Price, 1984. A lung for the city. A 24-hour workshop where all can extend their knowledge and delight in learning. From its start and throughout its construction and development, all must be welcomed to observe its continuous growth and change. No area should be… Read More
Ville Spatiale
20 November 2015
Ville Spatiale20 November 2015
The ‘spatial city’, or rather its infrastructure, is the support for a great number of heterogeneous messages. The spatial city, in a way, is the ‘blank sheet of paper’ on which a work is drawn. And it is precisely this nature of the blank sheet of paper that allows nearly… Read More
Believe in books (1998)
13 November 2015
Believe in books (1998)13 November 2015
I believe in books and the written word, therefore I fabricate works with the hope that they will be recorded in books. I am pragmatic and believe in keeping records. I believe to record is to bear witness. -John Hejduk Quoted from Such Places as Memory, 1998
Three Projects (1969)
12 November 2015
Three Projects (1969)12 November 2015
I believe in the density of the sparse. The Diamond Thesis is both creative and analytical. It implies new points of view in architectural space. It delineates with clarity the frontal facet of isometric projection in the two-dimensional space of the picture plane of the drawings. The realisation that works… Read More
Archizoom, Andrea Branzi and the No-Stop City
6 November 2015
Archizoom, Andrea Branzi and the No-Stop City6 November 2015
Archizoom describe this ‘hypothetical theatre’ as part of a fluid and unstoppable culture, a non-stop metropolis re-imagined to fit the times, characterised by mobile theatres, unbound books, rooms without plan, unwritten music, … and cities made of voids. For the first time the presentation technique has … become a specific… Read More
The Lost Art of Drawing
4 November 2015
The Lost Art of Drawing4 November 2015
The following has been excerpted from Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing, New York Times, 2012. I personally like to draw on translucent … tracing paper, which allows me to layer one drawing on top of another, building on what I’ve drawn before, and again, creating a personal, emotional connection… Read More
Dismantled Sketchbook
2 November 2015
Dismantled Sketchbook2 November 2015
To some extent this is the battleground of the British architectural avant-garde; the incompatibilities of graphics and architecture, the freedom that the former allows and the restrictions that the latter asserts. In recent years, the graphics have got smoother whilst the dialectic has remained largely unresolved. A conclusive project is… Read More
The Open Hand (1954)
1 November 2015
The Open Hand (1954)1 November 2015
The Open Hand will affirm that the second era of the machine-civilisation, the era of harmony, has started. -Le Corbusier
A Brutal Matter (1962)
16 October 2015
A Brutal Matter (1962)16 October 2015
Architecture … is a brutal matter … it crushes those who cannot stand it. – Walter Pichler. Quoted from a manuscript statement, c. 1962.
Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives
13 October 2015
Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives13 October 2015
‘Architecture,’ said Walter Pichler, ‘is a brutal matter … It crushes those who cannot stand it.’ Between 1961 and 1963 the sculptor and designer, working in collaboration with the architect Hans Hollein and drawing on conversations with Raimund Abraham and Friedrich Achleitner, introduced a radically adventurous new plasticity to architecture,… Read More
Buckminster Fuller: Six Patents
2 October 2015
Buckminster Fuller: Six Patents2 October 2015
1-170-604: Zelthaut für ein kugelkalottenförmiges Zeltgestell 1-097-653: Bauwerk in Kugel- oder Kugelabschnittform 1-292-354: Räumliches Gitterwerk für Gewölbe, Kuppeln 926-229: Geodesic Dome 1-294-387: Dôme à construction triangulée 1-009-850: Geodesic Structures
Aldo Rossi: Architecture and the City (1982)
11 March 2016
Aldo Rossi: Architecture and the City (1982)11 March 2016
– Peter Eisenman
The architectural drawing, formerly thought of exclusively as a form of representation, now becomes the locus of another reality. It is not only the site of illusion, as it has been traditionally, but also a real place of the suspended time of both life and death. Its reality is neither… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric) presentation memorial & monument architects on architects (editorial project)