Category: project & building histories
Jan Tschichold and El Lissitzky: Foto-Auge (Photo-eye)
29 June 2022
Jan Tschichold and El Lissitzky: Foto-Auge (Photo-eye)29 June 2022
Although not a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (DWB), Jan Tschichold was appointed to the selection committee for the Werkbund’s Film und Foto exhibition (FiFo), to be held in Stuttgart between May and June 1929. FiFo was one of the most ambitious attempts to showcase recent developments in photography. The… Read More
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House
10 June 2022
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House10 June 2022
A recent acquisition of six drawings by the American architect Benjamin Wistar Morris reveals his long involvement with one of the most important urban projects of the twentieth century. Morris’s role in this project was a highlight of his career although he has not been widely associated with it. A… Read More
The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves
6 June 2022
The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves6 June 2022
In 1586 Domenico Fontana completed the extraordinary task, commissioned by Pope Sixtus V, of moving the Vatican obelisk. The structure was said to have a ‘mysterious magic of an unknown civilization’, accepted by Christians due to the belief that it had witnessed the martyrdom of Saint Peter. In this text, André… Read More
Les Fêtes de Nuit (1937)
30 May 2022
Les Fêtes de Nuit (1937)30 May 2022
This is the best concise account of the technical sophistication behind the light and water installations created along and beside the Seine, for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937). We have added a group of gouache drawings by the architect René-André Coulon, made in the design phase for… Read More
Clancy Moore: Less is more
24 May 2022
Clancy Moore: Less is more24 May 2022
This linked text is part of an ongoing series that records the building projects undertaken at Shatwell Farm. For more on the Shatwell Project, click here.
William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England
18 May 2022
William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England18 May 2022
During the upheavals of the Civil War, Westminster Abbey had functioned as the church of the state for the Commonwealth. Upon the Restoration of Charles II, the Abbey resumed its historic role as the coronation church for English monarchs. [1] Parliament voted towards restoring the fabric, reinstituting its monarchical function… Read More
Robert Adam: The Long Gallery at Syon
13 May 2022
Robert Adam: The Long Gallery at Syon13 May 2022
– Stephen Astley, Adriano Aymonino, Markus Lähteenmäki and Frances Sands
On 18 December 2015, Frances Sands and Stephen Astley took out two leather-bound volumes from the Robert Adam Archive and laid them on the long table in the first-floor library at Sir John Soane’s museum. Adriano Aymonino and Markus Lähteenmäki, the initiators and editors of the Soane Oral Project, joined… Read More
Syon House and the Afterlife of Architectural Drawing
22 April 2022
Syon House and the Afterlife of Architectural Drawing22 April 2022
His writing is not about something; it is that something itself. [1] I knew very little about the eighteenth-century architect Robert Adam prior to June 2014. When challenged to respond to his drawings of the Long Gallery at Syon House, my impulse was to visit and draw my way through… Read More
Room at the Top?: Kate Macintosh, Denise Scott Brown and the kingmaker-critic
7 March 2022
Room at the Top?: Kate Macintosh, Denise Scott Brown and the kingmaker-critic7 March 2022
All creative disciplines rely on the mythologies of heroes: intellectual bigwigs who shape a profession’s academic and visual frameworks. A lengthy period of university study gives plenty of time for architecture students to ruminate on which white, male ‘guru’ to call their own — Corb, Aalto, Rossi, Scarpa? Drawings are… Read More
The Extended Portal: Atcost
28 February 2022
The Extended Portal: Atcost28 February 2022
On Shatwell farm, two barns stand side by side. The frames of both are precast concrete portal frames, made by Atcost in line with their standard profile and system which existed at the time. [1] A central line of columns is shared between both barns. Due to differing spans, the… Read More
Growth or Composition? Colin Rowe to Louis Kahn
10 February 2022
Growth or Composition? Colin Rowe to Louis Kahn10 February 2022
Extracted, with permission, from Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing edited by Michael Merrill, published by Lars Müller Publishers © 2021. Click here to read a review of this book by Stan Allen. An auspicious meeting: At the end of 1955, a thirty-five-year-old academic named Colin Rowe visited the office… Read More
Charles Stanley Peach: Pioneer in Power
8 February 2022
Charles Stanley Peach: Pioneer in Power8 February 2022
Charles Stanley Peach set up his architectural practice in 1884, just as the public’s access to electricity was established. Through his contacts in the engineering world, he became involved in designing power supply infrastructure, including Brown Hart Gardens, a substation and Italianate garden in Mayfair. The following excerpt is taken… Read More
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, Student Housing, Chieti
7 February 2022
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, Student Housing, Chieti7 February 2022
– Kersten Geers, Stefano Graziani and Jelena Pancevac
The 1976 competition for student housing was part of a development scheme for the recently founded D’Annunzio University, a joint initiative by the neighbouring provinces of Chieti and Pescara in the Abruzzo region of southern Italy. The town of Chieti is located 200km northeast of Rome, on the ancient main… Read More
Charles Jencks: Architect in the Jumping Universe
25 January 2022
Charles Jencks: Architect in the Jumping Universe25 January 2022
Gardens have always been the location to contemplate and speculate on man’s place in nature. Gardens bring the macrocosm into the microcosm by the necessity of being a living place, connecting to the wider rhythms, ecological networks, or the even more abstract forces that create our world. When Charles and… Read More
Álvaro Siza: The Adoration of the magi
19 January 2022
Álvaro Siza: The Adoration of the magi19 January 2022
Our story opens at the close of the Christmas season. It quite literally starts with an Epiphany, both chronologically and figuratively, a glimpse of Three Kings prompted by Niall Hobhouse’s holiday greetings. His somewhat precarious nativity scene, charmingly set upon Álvaro Siza’s yellow columns, reminded me of Sandro Botticelli’s Adoration… Read More
Decoding Wittgenstein’s Stonborough Villa
18 January 2022
Decoding Wittgenstein’s Stonborough Villa18 January 2022
God does not reveal himself in the world. The facts all belong only to the task and not to its performance. — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] In the 1980s, the beginning of widespread personal computing, we didn’t buy readymade software like today. Every night found me frantically writing a thousand lines… Read More
Sir John Soane’s Involvement in House Flipping
10 January 2022
Sir John Soane’s Involvement in House Flipping10 January 2022
Any architectural scheme with a lone surviving drawing is likely to be confounding. The lack of graphic context can easily lead to misunderstanding, as was the case for Sir John Soane’s work on 28 Bruton Street. It is my privilege to care for Soane’s drawings collection, and I felt quite… Read More
Working with Tony Fretton
4 January 2022
Working with Tony Fretton4 January 2022
In the early 1990s a number of architects, academics and artists came together in a rather fluid manner, meeting regularly in my Bloomsbury apartment. Tony Fretton was older than most of us and had already established a clear critical position. The conversations we had, and sometimes the arguments, were instructive… Read More
The Rural Homes of Marcelo Ferraz and Francisco Fanucci
13 December 2021
The Rural Homes of Marcelo Ferraz and Francisco Fanucci13 December 2021
Where our sertão remainsEvery happy little houseStill neighbors a streamAnd still harbors its arbors Where our sertão remainsEvery happy little homeCooks on the coal cookerThe wood stove’s still blown[…] Where sertão remainsEvery little house is gladfor on the evenings we get our Hail-MaryAnd the pleasure of being alone ‘Casinha feliz’,… Read More
The Temple of Flora, Stourhead: a paradise revisited
9 December 2021
The Temple of Flora, Stourhead: a paradise revisited9 December 2021
In 1744 Henry Hoare employed Henry Flitcroft to design a temple for his magnificent Palladian gardens at Stourhead: The Temple of Flora, which was built by William Privett in 1744–5. Excerpted below is an account of the temple’s history taken from Dudley Dodd’s book, Stourhead: Henry Hoare’s Paradise Revisited (2021). Purchase… Read More
The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors
30 November 2021
The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors30 November 2021
The following excerpt from Peter Jefferson Smith’s The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors (2019) charts the involvement of three generations of the I’Anson dynasty (Edward Sr [1775–1853]; Edward Jr [1812–1888]; and Edward Blakeway [1843–1912]) in the design of the Corn Exchange in Mark Lane, City of London.… Read More
The Philips Pavilion: Models as Structural Expression
23 November 2021
The Philips Pavilion: Models as Structural Expression23 November 2021
The following text discusses the use of models as an integral part of the architectural process. It is excerpted from Matthew Mindrup’s article on the roles of models in the design of the Sydney Opera House and Iannis Xenakis and Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion for the 1958 World’s Fair (arq:… Read More
Workshop: On Siza’s March ’77 Sketchbook
22 June 2022
Workshop: On Siza’s March ’77 Sketchbook22 June 2022
– Manuel Montenegro
This audio recording documents a workshop on Álvaro Siza’s Malagueira sketchbook delivered by Manuel Montenegro to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The sketchbook is a record of Siza’s thoughts and responses over three days in 1977, on… Read More
sketch housing DMC