Category: on their own work

The Open Hand (1954)

The Open Hand (1954)

Le Corbusier

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)

A Brutal Matter (1962)

Walter Pichler

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

Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives

Editors

‘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

Buckminster Fuller: Six Patents

Editors

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

Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

Editors

Slenderness, Lightness, and Strength. From Inventions: The Patented Works of R.Buckminster Fuller, 1983

Isolation or Participation?

Isolation or Participation?

Ugo La Pietra

Isolation or participation? The immersions were allusions to two contrary attitudes ever present in the deportment of so many in this era: a readiness to join the currents of social change or a determination to isolate oneself, waiting for what might be next. 

Preamble to a New World (1963)

Preamble to a New World (1963)

Constant

Stones speak. Towns speak. Ruins and skylines: the story of the people. From ‘Preamble to a New World,’ New Babylon, 1963.

A Life of Their Own (1985)

A Life of Their Own (1985)

Paul Rudolph

The following has been excerpted from Staying Creative; Artistic Passion is a Lifelong Pursuit – and These Mature Masters Prove the Point. (Otto Luening, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Rudolph), December 1985. I try to find a graphic means of indicating what’s happening to the space. Space can move quickly or slowly. It… Read More

History & Origins

History & Origins

Aldo Rossi

And these old drawings […] now have their own history, an almost enforced form of composition. And yet I wonder at the fact that they are the origin or germ of these new architectural works, which others could regard as more professional. In actual fact, invention and imagination have deeper… Read More

The Hatred of Rendering (1930)

The Hatred of Rendering (1930)

Le Corbusier

The following has been extracted from a lecture delivered in Brazil in 1930. I should like to give you the hatred of rendering … Architecture is in space, in extent, in depth, in height: it is volumes and circulation. Architecture is made inside one’s head. The sheet of paper is… Read More

Sketch from Vézelay from Letter to Mérimée (1843)

Sketch from Vézelay from Letter to Mérimée (1843)

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

From a letter to Mérimée written in 1843 from Vézelay: You, Sir, who have ceaselessly lived the life of the past, you understand the joy, the secret happiness felt when we can record in our sketchbook some of these forgotten [historical] treasures … but how much more interesting when these… Read More

Five Boxes

Five Boxes

Michael Craig-Martin

Line drawing — drawing without shading, cross-hatching or chiaroscuro — permits and conveys the most precise sense of accuracy of any kind of drawing. The facts are laid bare, nothing can be fudged or obscured. Leonardo used line drawing for his studies of everything from flying machines to the human… Read More

Potomania (1982)

Potomania (1982)

Jacques Couëlle

Call it ‘Potomania’ — plants and flowers above all … a column of water cascading freely on to a little pond … the column a staff both shining and singing.