Category: project & building histories
Boompjes I
22.02.2019
Boompjes I22.02.2019
In the 1980s, the city of Rotterdam asked OMA to study its high-rise building and to illustrate their findings in a planning proposal. The site, selected in consultation with the Rotterdam Planning Department, was situated on Maasboulevard, near the Maasbridge – an angle between the river and the lower city grid, a ‘hinge’… Read More
Roosevelt Island
17.02.2019
Roosevelt Island17.02.2019
The Roosevelt Island competition was sponsored by New York State Urban Development Corporation for the urbanisation of an island in the East River of Manhattan. The city grid served as a formal generator for the building types, adapted with controlling geometry to the proportions of the island’s topography. There are… Read More
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Mark Dorrian in Conversation with Michael Webb, Episode 3
21.01.2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Mark Dorrian in Conversation with Michael Webb, Episode 321.01.2019
– Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
The third episode of Michael Webb’s conversation with Mark Dorrian resumes with the fate of the Sin Centre model. The piece is published to mark the entry of the first part of a new model of the Sin Centre into the Drawing Matter collection. The conversation took place on Wednesday,… Read More
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in Conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 2
21.01.2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in Conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 221.01.2019
– Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
Mark Dorrian: I’ve loaded some images – Michael, by the way, doesn’t know what’s coming up. After showing this, the drawing of the building, I thought it would be useful to show a couple of slides about the context in which this project then appeared. The Furniture Manufacturers Building is… Read More
Superstudio: In Yesterday’s Tomorrow
23.12.2018
Superstudio: In Yesterday’s Tomorrow23.12.2018
‘Metamorphoses become frequent when a culture does not have sufficient courage to commit suicide (to eliminate itself) and has no clear alternatives to offer either‘ – Adolfo Natalini Following social and economic upheaval, there is often a retreat to the home. Traditionally, the ‘home’ is identified with a site of… Read More
OMA’S Nederlands Dans Theater
15.12.2018
OMA’S Nederlands Dans Theater15.12.2018
Since you have asked about the two small sketches from Luce van Rooy Gallery attributed to Zaha: they are my drawings from the very early stages of the Nederlands Dans Theater project. The original site was not in The Hague but in Scheveningen, just down the road near the beach.… Read More
Zaha Hadid
27.11.2018
Zaha Hadid27.11.2018
When, in January 1983, Peter Cook reviewed a recently held exhibition for Zaha Hadid’s 59 Eaton Place, he spoke of the resonance between the individual and their education in developing an architectural identity. [1] He pondered on the development of Hadid over that period, What if fate had led her… Read More
Commonplace
12.11.2018
Commonplace12.11.2018
In 1877, London’s Building News reprinted – as the ‘work of two eminent architects, though it cannot be said to be their joint production’ – an elevation, plan, and partial section published by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a model town house, noting that this supposed ‘London Residence’ had been adapted – with due… Read More
Madelon Vriesendorp
04.11.2018
Madelon Vriesendorp04.11.2018
– Niall Hobhouse and Madelon Vriesdendorp
Excerpted from Madelon Vreisendop in conversation with Niall Hobhouse, RIBA, 2 July 2018
V&A Dundee by Model
27.10.2018
V&A Dundee by Model27.10.2018
This video shows, through a non-linear sequence of model images, the design process behind V&A Dundee. At Kengo Kuma & Associates model making is a critical tool at all stages of the design process, from concept to detailing. In the case of V&A Dundee spatial explorations – cliff-like twisting surfaces… Read More
Bruce Goff
20.10.2018
Bruce Goff20.10.2018
This is an unbuilt house and studio project for two artists in the dry country of west Texas. It comes from a happy moment when architects could see no equation between the unreasonable and the unbuildable. Bruce Goff christened it APARTURE, perhaps a play on the words ‘apartness’, for its… Read More
Michael Graves: Fargo-Moorehead Cultural Bridge
15.10.2018
Michael Graves: Fargo-Moorehead Cultural Bridge15.10.2018
The Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Bridge is an unrealised project combining infrastructural and cultural programs: a vehicular bridge between two cities over the Red River, a performing arts building in Fargo, North Dakota, the Red River Valley heritage interpretive centre in Moorhead, Minnesota, and at the centre over the river itself, an… Read More
Hugh Ferriss
04.10.2018
Hugh Ferriss04.10.2018
In 1916 a series of laws came into force in the city of New York called the Zoning Ordinance, the first of its kind in America, which regulated building use, area and height of new buildings.
Hugh Strange Architects: Drawing Matter Archive
02.10.2018
Hugh Strange Architects: Drawing Matter Archive02.10.2018
We worked on the design of the Drawing Matter Archive in Somerset from September 2011 through to completion of the building in February 2014, providing a building of two halves with a studio space for day-to-day working and an adjacent space for the storage and occasional display of the clients’… Read More
Aux Citoyens Membres de La Commune attachés à la commissions des services publics
07.09.2018
Netherfield Scroll Two
28.08.2018
Netherfield Scroll Two28.08.2018
What follows here forms the second part of a two-part conversation. It has been extracted from the original email exchange between Chris Cross, Jeremy Dixon, Michael Gold and Edward Jones in relation to the acquisition of the Netherfield Scroll, published in part one. The Netherfield Scroll – which measures 20… Read More
Grunt Group: Unrolling the Netherfield Scroll
28.08.2018
Grunt Group: Unrolling the Netherfield Scroll28.08.2018
On 7 April 2018, former members of the Grunt Group – Chris Cross, Jeremy Dixon, Michael Gold and Edward Jones – presented their Netherfield Scroll to Drawing Matter. The 20-foot-long drawing was created c. 1971 for a low-density, social housing estate in Milton Keynes. The following video is a brief… Read More
Drawing Out Gehry
20.08.2018
Drawing Out Gehry20.08.2018
There is something about the immediacy of drawing at a large size, standing in front of a drawing board that brings the quality and urgency of instant involvement with a subject in view. Drawing at a size in relation to your body allows for the drawing not to become object, treasured in hand,… Read More
Richard J. Neutra
10.08.2018
Richard J. Neutra10.08.2018
‘Richard J. Neutra has carried on the Wagner tradition of experimentation in new forms, materials and methods of construction… an impetus to the intelligent solution of new problems.’ Ernestine M. Fantl on the Corona Avenue School, ‘Modern Architecture in California’ (Typescript Mimeograph, MoMA Archives, 1935) Just before 6 o’clock on… Read More
Yacht Club Path
02.08.2018
Yacht Club Path02.08.2018
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
A Fragment of Wright’s Great City
16.07.2018
A Fragment of Wright’s Great City16.07.2018
Wright, Wagner and the Idea of the Great City We become greater in service to the general effect, more harmonious as part of the whole.– Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘To my European Co-Workers’, 1925 ‘I came upon the Secession during the winter of 1910,’ Wright wrote in An Autobiography, noting with great… Read More
Three Timber Constructions
10.07.2018
Three Timber Constructions10.07.2018
When forested and harvested responsibly timber can be considered as a sustainable, renewable resource. With regard to its use as the material of choice in these self-build projects, it has two distinct advantages: firstly, it is fairly cheap relative to other building products. Secondly, it is a democratic material –… Read More
Behind the Lines 9
02.02.2019
Behind the Lines 902.02.2019
– Philippa Lewis
Cyril Ponsonby walked anxiously from where he was staying in Wilbury Road, Hove over to the Hotel Metropole on the Brighton sea front. It was 1907, a sunny day in early August. He was hot and bothered. Under his arm he held a sheaf of papers. He went through the… Read More
topographic/cartographic presentation publication urban form behind the lines (series) creative writing DMC