Medium: digital
Library of Babel
29.06.2020
Library of Babel29.06.2020
In its most rudimentary form, a LIDAR scan is a simple act of call and response. Thousands of beams of light leave the scanner and receive a measurement based on the distance and intensity (essentially a value of reflectivity) of the objects they collide with. The fascination in these scans… Read More
SUPA Architects: Naked Plans
06.06.2020
SUPA Architects: Naked Plans06.06.2020
– Christian Schweitzer and Ryul Song
This drawing, the first in our ‘Naked Plan’ series, overlaps 107 A3 sheets of construction drawings for House P, a private house in Pyeonchang-dong, Seoul (2013-15). Stripped in Autocad of all information, such as image, text and mtext, line weight, saturation and lightness, only the basic lines remain. Through the… Read More
Calculated Aesthetics
19.05.2020
Calculated Aesthetics19.05.2020
The floor plan of the Losone gymnasium (1990–1997) by Livio Vacchini is a computer drawing made through the repetition of four basic elements: a rectangular black solid, and three types of short lines – one vertical and two diagonals in opposite directions. The black solid is copied with equal distance… Read More
Drawing on the Nolli Plan
01.05.2020
Drawing on the Nolli Plan01.05.2020
Every January, when John and I visit Rome, I bring a set of A3 photocopies of the Nolli plan (Giambattista Nolli’s Nuova Topografia di Roma, 1748). I don’t bring the whole map – it stretches to twelve sheets, each about A2 in size – so before arriving I am already editing… Read More
Scanning Shatwell
30.04.2020
Scanning Shatwell30.04.2020
Every image you see on your screen is known as a raster image. Every image is made up of millions of squares of colour, or pixels. Each file has a particular size, height and width, and within that frame, each pixel has a particular size, colour, intensity and location in… Read More
Allies & Morrison: The Art of Architecture
18.04.2020
Allies & Morrison: The Art of Architecture18.04.2020
Allies and Morrison is an office that has held onto its identity throughout its growth. When I entered the firm, the culture of the office was steeped in a careful, polite and thoughtful style of drawings. The muted drawing style could be observed in the early sketches of the partners… Read More
The San Cataldo Ossuary in the Age of Hyper-Objects
16.04.2020
The San Cataldo Ossuary in the Age of Hyper-Objects16.04.2020
I An abandoned house – a derelict phantom with no roof and no windows – reveals the twofold condition of architecture as image and as form. In San Cataldo, the image and form of death. As image: from afar, a metaphysical de Chirican presence, suspended between Adolf Loos’s project in… Read More
Spaghetti with Meatballs
20.01.2020
Spaghetti with Meatballs20.01.2020
I was born in Berlin in 1943 and came to the US in 1949 when my father got a position at the University of Illinois. I was interested in history, art and mathematics, so I studied architecture there. I interrupted my studies to work in an office in San Francisco… Read More
Imaginal Cloud Spaces
31.12.2019
Imaginal Cloud Spaces31.12.2019
Many hours can be spent on what art historian Mary Berry calls ‘the sheer act of looking’ at the Japanese folding-screen paintings titled Rakuchu Rakugai zu (Scenes in and around Kyoto). [1] Across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such paintings captured a seemingly complete image of the capital city. Through the consistent use of… Read More
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero
23.09.2019
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero23.09.2019
Sometime in 1981, while I was working on my final thesis project at the Cooper Union, John Hejduk set me a drawing exercise. We had been discussing the spatial implications of the 90-degree axonometric. [1] Hejduk had a very particular understanding of this drawing type, which involved folding or hinging… Read More
Marco Frascari
20.10.2018
Marco Frascari20.10.2018
Architectural theorist and architect Marco Frascari defined the brouillon as a drawing meant to be recopied, times and again. This is a generative drawing, that entices reflections in time and whose value lives up to, and even beyond, a time of making. A brouillon is a counter drawing, which encapsulates the significance of a… Read More
The Facade is the Window to the Soul of Architecture: Venice Architecture Biennale, 2018
01.08.2018
The Facade is the Window to the Soul of Architecture: Venice Architecture Biennale, 201801.08.2018
– Adam Caruso and Helen Thomas
In response to the Biennale’s theme of Freespace, Caruso St John Architects put together an exhibition that celebrates the historical richness and social generosity of the façade. Whether a building is public or private, whatever its intended use, its façades have the responsibility to make a positive contribution to the public… Read More
Onto an Epicycle of Cones
30.07.2018
Onto an Epicycle of Cones30.07.2018
This drawing is part of a series that interrogates the orthographic drawing techniques of Guarino Guarini (1624–1683) set out in his posthumous treatise, Architettura civile, (1737). While some of the drawings from the series deal with the direct documentation of his orthographic drawings, this particular drawing translates his written and drawn instructions… Read More
Foster + Partners: Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus
26.07.2018
Foster + Partners: Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus26.07.2018
Following on from Farshid Moussavi’s curatorial decision to create a display of construction drawings that showcase the ‘full complexity of the different systems and parts of buildings’, I chose this compelling BIM drawing from the Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus project, which suitably illustrates our integrated design approach. Throughout the… Read More
Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
06.07.2018
Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects06.07.2018
– Toyo Ito
The catenoidal structures of the National Taichung Theatre unfold their space both vertically and laterally, forming the continuous interior space-tubes for the theatrical venue — named ‘Sound Caves’. Our design theme for this building was, from the planning to construction period, to conceive of the structural and mechanical arrangement along… Read More
Architectural Ethnography: Japan Pavilion
12.06.2018
Architectural Ethnography: Japan Pavilion12.06.2018
Flooded with light cast across alluringly animated walls, the Japan Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Biennale in Venice is lined with drawings gathered together under the name of Architectural Ethnography. Momoyo Kaijima of Atelier Bow Wow has been developing the thinking underlying this method of observing and recording the human environment since the… Read More
Elizabeth Hatz: Line, Light, Locus
23.05.2018
Elizabeth Hatz: Line, Light, Locus23.05.2018
This is a Drawing Room, a with-drawing room. It is simply a love-declaration to the architectural drawing. Four walls, three large doorways. One end calmer, the other more open. The first thing decided is a table-bench; the drawing flat on the tabletop – like when you draw it – and… Read More
Elena Manferdini
17.04.2018
Elena Manferdini17.04.2018
The tryptic Ink on Mirror is part of a collection of elevation studies developed over the past three years by my office, Atelier Manferdini. My reason for compiling a suite of digital sketches was rooted in the belief that for the past twenty years computers have been able to produce new geometrical… Read More
Nicholas Grimshaw
05.04.2018
Nicholas Grimshaw05.04.2018
This axonometric of the Arthur Phillip High School illustrates the very inner workings of the building. Stripped bare of its materiality – the steel and concrete frame, the inner and outer facades and interior finishes – to reveal the network of elements which make the building come alive. These vital… Read More
Dominique Perrault Architecte
05.04.2018
Dominique Perrault Architecte05.04.2018
Pavilion Dufour, Château de Versailles, Developed Horizontal Wood Blades, Wall Covering began as a working document, resulting from the exchanges and developments between the acoustician, my team and the company engaged to build the acoustical panels covering the walls of the auditorium. This document immediately caught my attention because it seemed… Read More
WilkinsonEyre
28.03.2018
WilkinsonEyre28.03.2018
This drawing presents a snapshot of the BIM model from the northern end of Battersea Power Station. Combined with a point cloud survey of the existing fabric, it overlays newer elements of construction with layers of the historic model. Careful selection of the information presented makes it possible to see… Read More
Niall McLaughlin
17.03.2018
Niall McLaughlin17.03.2018
ALZHEIMER’S RESPITE CENTRE, DUBLIN We had six sites to look at and we did a feasibility study for each one. We eventually ended up with one which in many ways is not very satisfactory for people with dementia because it is an eighteenth-century walled garden. But what we did was… Read More
AL_A: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter
05.03.2018
AL_A: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter05.03.2018
Farshid Moussavi’s brief for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition asked for representations of the complexities of designing and realising buildings and structures. We illustrated this by overlaying each level of intervention in a different colour – from the existing V&A stonework in green, the services in purple, to the… Read More
Hybrid Studio
23.07.2020
Hybrid Studio23.07.2020
– Brian Carter
Describing how architects work, Liz Diller noted that in her office ‘we draw, we look in each other’s eyes, we argue, we throw things around the room, we make models and break them apart, and somehow stuff gets made.’ However, things suddenly changed in March 2020. It became ‘very sanitized…… Read More
sketch projection (axonometric isometric) transport social engagement Teaching (project)