Category: project & building histories
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
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
Aldo Rossi Cabina Construction
10.07.2018
Aldo Rossi Cabina Construction10.07.2018
The blue and pink cabin suffers from a few structural/constructional inadequacies. The first of these to be noticed is the door which binds within in its ‘frame’ (there is no frame as such; the short strap hinges simply hang off the boarding). The vertical boards which make the door have… Read More
Schinkel: ‘Precisely Loose’
19.06.2018
Schinkel: ‘Precisely Loose’19.06.2018
What light may Schinkel’s drawings shed on Building Information Modelling (BIM) practice? In 1806 the young Schinkel was asked to develop a residence design from a set of initial layout plans. He drew a façade section, a peristyle detail and a column capital, before the war began and the commission… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin and Fallingwater
29.04.2018
Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin and Fallingwater29.04.2018
The formative history of Frank Lloyd Wright – leading to Fallingwater – touches upon many of the themes that run through the exhibition ‘The Land We Live In – The Land We Left Behind’ (Hauser & Wirth Somerset till May 7th). The idea that there is a rural mindset, an… Read More
Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House
26.04.2018
Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House26.04.2018
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
14.04.2018
David Kohn Architects14.04.2018
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
Behind the Lines 4
28.03.2018
Behind the Lines 428.03.2018
Isabella Puddefoot settled herself on the sofa, picked up her embroidery, and after enquiring about his day at the bank, remarked to her husband Samuel: ‘I do declare I am quite spent; running up and down stairs all day is very trying to my constitution. It is eight flights from dealing… Read More
A. W. N. Pugin
13.03.2018
A. W. N. Pugin13.03.2018
In 1846 Viscount Feilding (later 8th Earl of Denbigh) married Louisa Pennant. She was the great-granddaughter of the topographer Thomas Pennant, and inherited his house, Downing Hall, in Flintshire. They decided to build a church to celebrate their marriage. The architect was Thomas Henry Wyatt (who also added to Downing). Building… Read More
R. Norman Shaw
11.03.2018
R. Norman Shaw11.03.2018
R. Norman Shaw (1831–1912) is commonly thought of as a domestic architect, but he built a fair number of churches, sixteen altogether, many of them original and remarkable in one way or another. There is an evolution in Shaw’s church designs from the emotional ardour of his earliest efforts, like… Read More
Carlos Diniz: United States Embassy, Moscow
14.02.2018
Carlos Diniz: United States Embassy, Moscow14.02.2018
The Commons Overview These drawings were exhibited in ‘Off Location: Drawings for the US Embassy, Moscow’, an impromptu exhibition held at Pushkin House from 13–28 February 2018. In conjunction with the exhibition, curator Tim Abrahams gave a talk entitled ‘Fiction and Reality in Moscow’ at Pushkin House.
Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals
25.01.2018
Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals25.01.2018
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
19.01.2018
Florian Beigel & Kisa Kawakami19.01.2018
– 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
Yona Friedman: Space-chain Structures
11.01.2018
Yona Friedman: Space-chain Structures11.01.2018
‘Proteinic structures’, ‘proteinic chains’, ‘space chains’ and ‘iconostase’ are different names for similar structures, proposed and varied over the years by Yona Friedman. [1] They originally have in common a single material, metal, and a principle: the possibility of an infinite architecture. Such an unrealistic but visionary use of giant… Read More
Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont
07.01.2018
Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont07.01.2018
– Editors
This large and exquisite drawing by Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont represents a garden design in the form of the plan of St Peter’s Basilica and Piazza by Bernini. Serried ranks of trees rather than stone walls and columns are used to marshal a vast landscape into a perfect emblem of… Read More
Sir William Chambers: Somerset House
23.12.2017
Sir William Chambers: Somerset House23.12.2017
Approximately 700 drawings of Sir William Chambers’ eighteenth-century design for Somerset House reside at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Yet, to start, it was not at all certain that Chambers would get the commission. At that point in his career he was Comptroller of the Works under King George III, a… Read More
Anthony Salvin
18.12.2017
Anthony Salvin18.12.2017
As Torquay expanded in the mid-nineteenth century with the town’s prominence as a seaside retreat and a connection to the South Devon railway made in 1848, new churches were built to accommodate the increased number of parishioners and seasonal visitors. Whilst construction of the new church of St Mary Magdalene… Read More
William Butterfield
06.12.2017
William Butterfield06.12.2017
Nothing Permitted But What Has Been Foreseen William Butterfield eschewed the illustrative perspective, preferring instead to develop even his studies as contract drawings that would serve three tasks: as presentations through which a project could be comprehended, as instructions from which his contractors and clients could not swerve, and as… Read More
Richard J. Neutra
10.08.2018
Richard J. Neutra10.08.2018
– Nicholas Olsberg
‘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
publication education construction drawing DMC plan section elevation