Medium: drawing
Nancy Holt: Sky Mound
8 April 2021
Nancy Holt: Sky Mound8 April 2021
Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt recalibrated the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. Across five decades she… Read More
Hans Hollein: From a Distance
7 April 2021
Hans Hollein: From a Distance7 April 2021
On a page of Hans Hollein’s sketchbook, a cluster of adobe buildings climb slowly and modestly above the horizon, seeming to rise out of the earth. The sketch, produced in 1960 during the Austrian architect’s exploration of the western United States, feels unorthodox for Hollein, whose proclivity for radical, anti-Functionalist… Read More
Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)
6 April 2021
Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)6 April 2021
This speech on building – and architects – was made by Adam to Mr Poyser in Chapter 49 of George Eliot’s novel. It was pointed out to us by the Eliot scholar, Dermot Coleman, who added that ‘it is generally a safe bet that views on such matters expressed by Adam… Read More
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): REVIEW & EXCERPTS
30 March 2021
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): REVIEW & EXCERPTS30 March 2021
Review Making a book about making a building creates a special narrative challenge in the constant battle between reality and myth that vibrates through non-fiction publications and the ways in which we as readers engage with and interpret them. This is complicated even more when making a book about a… Read More
Casino Royale: Stynen’s unrealised sculpture garden
30 March 2021
Casino Royale: Stynen’s unrealised sculpture garden30 March 2021
The city council of the seaside town Oostende organised a competition for its new casino-kursaal in 1945, and a design by Antwerp architect Léon Stynen was chosen as the winner the following year. Stynen was a prominent name by that time, having previously designed casinos for Knokke, Chaudfontaine, and Blankenberge.… Read More
André Arbus: Details Matter
29 March 2021
André Arbus: Details Matter29 March 2021
These presentation drawings – polished, finished, complete – were drawn by André Arbus in the 1950s. They are of a compact, open-plan apartment. Although they are not design drawings, they reveal a lot about the process of design. They communicate thought and care and suggest many drawings have come before them.… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 10: Studio Othenin-Girard
29 March 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 10: Studio Othenin-Girard29 March 2021
This is the tenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode, Guillaume Othenin-Girard discusses his studio at the University of Hong Kong which explored… Read More
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield
26 March 2021
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield26 March 2021
The Site Plan was one of the Planning drawings prepared for submission to Chelmsford District Council and Essex County Council. It is A1 size and drawn on Wiggins Teape 112 gram ‘Gateway’ tracing paper. The East Hanningfield job was the first on which ‘A’ sized paper had been used in… Read More
Studio Mumbai’s Tape Drawing
25 March 2021
Studio Mumbai’s Tape Drawing25 March 2021
Rain falls from the sky as a five-month monsoon season sweeps across India. Often associated with abundance and blessing, rain is a sign of good prospects, particularly for Southwest Indian farmers who are dependent on rainfall for their crops. The Saatrasta-Mahindra tape drawing embodies the term ‘adapting to place’, as… Read More
Derrida & Eisenman: Laugh(ing) of(f) the lyre
22 March 2021
Derrida & Eisenman: Laugh(ing) of(f) the lyre22 March 2021
‘I think I understand, at least in principle.’ [1] Jacques Derrida tries to keep track of Peter Eisenman’s elaborate explanation. It is the 21st of April 1986, and in New Haven, Connecticut, philosopher and architect conduct the fifth of six meetings for their design of a garden in Bernard Tschumi’s… Read More
Marie-José Van Hee: Seeing not Showing
22 March 2021
Marie-José Van Hee: Seeing not Showing22 March 2021
‘House’ by Marie-José Van Hee is drawn on a sheet of trace, the edge of which is visible at the top, offset from the plain white ground for photographing or scanning. It is a freehand drawing that uses black graphite for lines, to hatch, shade, and achieve gradations of roughly rendered… Read More
Haunted: Robert Smithson’s ‘My House is a Decayed House’
18 March 2021
Haunted: Robert Smithson’s ‘My House is a Decayed House’18 March 2021
The following text is excerpted from Dr. Suzaan Boettger’s research for her book in process, The Passions of Robert Smithson, Art and Life. Follow her on Instagram @NatrCultr, where images are tagged #UnknownSmithson. ‘History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors.’ If the sardonic analogy sounds like Robert Smithson, you’re close: it was written by his favorite… Read More
The Floor Plan of a Room
17 March 2021
The Floor Plan of a Room17 March 2021
Drawn from memory, the floor plan of a room in which two plan chests stand apart like two rectangular islands, plain-faced in plan but each one a tower of uncountable lines, paper upon paper suspended and preserved within the pellucid sleeves of polyester where they lie dormant and entombed as… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 8: Patrick Lynch
16 March 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 8: Patrick Lynch16 March 2021
This is the eighth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode we share Instagram posts by Patrick Lynch in which he describes his experience… Read More
Excerpt: Shadow Places
15 March 2021
Excerpt: Shadow Places15 March 2021
The following text is excerpted from Simon Unwin’s book on shadow, in his series Analysing Architecture Notebooks, available here. For 20% off until May 31st 2021, use code KHL20. The piece is illustrated with drawings specially selected by Simon from the Drawing Matter collection. ‘Yea, though I walk through the… Read More
Hans Poelzig: Der Golem
11 March 2021
Hans Poelzig: Der Golem11 March 2021
I gaze at the screen, engrossed in the German horror film Der Golem (originally released in 1915 and reworked for reissue in 1920), a masterpiece of performance art. This cinematographic journey is my latest odyssey into the work of Hans Poelzig. The film catalogues his lesser-known work in the art… Read More
The MARS Group’s Plan for London, 1933-1944
8 March 2021
The MARS Group’s Plan for London, 1933-19448 March 2021
Collaboration within the field of architecture is as important as ever before. Construction projects grow increasingly complex, and pressing social issues need addressing. Yet we think of architects as unique and outstanding personalities that profoundly shape our built environment. This image of the architect as ‘genius’ is more present among… Read More
Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things
8 March 2021
Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things8 March 2021
The following text was first published in The Library: Glasgow School of Art (2014), edited by Mark Baines, John Barr and Christopher Platt. The text describes Paul Clarke’s process of surveying Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s library at the Glasgow School of Art, which he undertook in 1993. When the library was… Read More
Stanley Peach: Church Plan based on the Figure of Christ
8 March 2021
Stanley Peach: Church Plan based on the Figure of Christ8 March 2021
Charles Stanley Peach’s watercolour over pencil painting is executed by overlaying two forms of religious representation: figural images over a church plan reflecting a ceiling plan. The figurative depictions narrate accounts of Christianity through various portrayals of Christ; the most prominent being God, benevolent, and Jesus crucified. Other portraits of… Read More
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique
4 March 2021
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique4 March 2021
The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid has served as ‘the image of an absolute beginning’, as Rosalind Krauss affirmed in 1986 in ‘The Originality of… Read More
The Perpetual Race of Piranesi and the Tortoise
1 March 2021
The Perpetual Race of Piranesi and the Tortoise1 March 2021
Melting reality, ancient history and fantasy into one, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi hold an unparalleled allure that continues to entrance and captivate. They offer an escape into imagined and unknown worlds; each drawing an organism of its own, containing an immense depth of spatial layering and an extraordinary… Read More
Architecture’s Mirror Stage
26 February 2021
Architecture’s Mirror Stage26 February 2021
Mirrors and mirrored glass, perhaps the most characteristically postmodern of surface treatments, were not only a material choice but also emblematized a turn inward toward what Sylvia Lavin has taken to calling ‘architecture itself.’ As the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan might have put it, it was at this moment that modernist… Read More
Remembering a House in an Indiana Cornfield
31 March 2021
Remembering a House in an Indiana Cornfield31 March 2021
– Larry Richards
Dear Nicholas, It was wonderful to connect to your seminar and with you. We must catch up soon. I learned a lot from your presentation. And it brought back a flood of memories. Just now I quickly sketched the open plan house my father designed and had built in 1946,… Read More
sketch plan