Medium: drawing
Peter Märkli: Thinking Drawings
15.11.2015
Peter Märkli: Thinking Drawings15.11.2015
– Florian Beigel and Philip Christou
These are an intriguing set of drawings … they are very memorable and have a charm and magic about them. They have a directness, a sense of humour and ease, they make you smile. At first glance they look as if they were done by someone who is untrained, they… Read More
Believe in books (1998)
13.11.2015
Believe in books (1998)13.11.2015
I believe in books and the written word, therefore I fabricate works with the hope that they will be recorded in books. I am pragmatic and believe in keeping records. I believe to record is to bear witness. -John Hejduk Quoted from Such Places as Memory, 1998
Archizoom, Andrea Branzi and the No-Stop City
06.11.2015
Archizoom, Andrea Branzi and the No-Stop City06.11.2015
Archizoom describe this ‘hypothetical theatre’ as part of a fluid and unstoppable culture, a non-stop metropolis re-imagined to fit the times, characterised by mobile theatres, unbound books, rooms without plan, unwritten music, … and cities made of voids. For the first time the presentation technique has … become a specific… Read More
The Lost Art of Drawing
04.11.2015
The Lost Art of Drawing04.11.2015
The following has been excerpted from Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing, New York Times, 2012. I personally like to draw on translucent … tracing paper, which allows me to layer one drawing on top of another, building on what I’ve drawn before, and again, creating a personal, emotional connection… Read More
Dismantled Sketchbook
02.11.2015
Dismantled Sketchbook02.11.2015
To some extent this is the battleground of the British architectural avant-garde; the incompatibilities of graphics and architecture, the freedom that the former allows and the restrictions that the latter asserts. In recent years, the graphics have got smoother whilst the dialectic has remained largely unresolved. A conclusive project is… Read More
The Open Hand (1954)
01.11.2015
The Open Hand (1954)01.11.2015
The Open Hand will affirm that the second era of the machine-civilisation, the era of harmony, has started. -Le Corbusier
James Gowan: The Expandable House
01.11.2015
James Gowan: The Expandable House01.11.2015
James Gowan and James Stirling, first as partners (1956–1963) and then in their own practices, reworked the ideas of composition both in plan and section, often echoing alternative Modernist sources, such as those of the Soviet avant-garde. They looked for new ways to forge connections between programme and form, and… Read More
Zünd-Up: ‘Psycho-dynamic’ Street and Park System
23.10.2015
Zünd-Up: ‘Psycho-dynamic’ Street and Park System23.10.2015
An element in this Viennese collective’s proposal to extend the city into a newly ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system, this ‘Cortina-Bob-Bahn’ would have ornamented the gardens of the Prater with a drive-yourself roller-coaster tower some 1500 metres high.
A Brutal Matter (1962)
16.10.2015
A Brutal Matter (1962)16.10.2015
Architecture … is a brutal matter … it crushes those who cannot stand it. – Walter Pichler. Quoted from a manuscript statement, c. 1962.
Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives
13.10.2015
Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives13.10.2015
‘Architecture,’ said Walter Pichler, ‘is a brutal matter … It crushes those who cannot stand it.’ Between 1961 and 1963 the sculptor and designer, working in collaboration with the architect Hans Hollein and drawing on conversations with Raimund Abraham and Friedrich Achleitner, introduced a radically adventurous new plasticity to architecture,… Read More
Haus-Rücker-Co.
09.10.2015
Haus-Rücker-Co.09.10.2015
This art collective – we might call them the ‘house thief company’ or ‘house drawing company’– took its name from a pun on the verb ‘to draw’ and an old slang word for ‘thief’. Their projects during this period involved interventions in which a house or building would be ‘stolen’… Read More
Buckminster Fuller: Six Patents
02.10.2015
Buckminster Fuller: Six Patents02.10.2015
1-170-604: Zelthaut für ein kugelkalottenförmiges Zeltgestell 1-097-653: Bauwerk in Kugel- oder Kugelabschnittform 1-292-354: Räumliches Gitterwerk für Gewölbe, Kuppeln 926-229: Geodesic Dome 1-294-387: Dôme à construction triangulée 1-009-850: Geodesic Structures
Buckminster Fuller
01.10.2015
Buckminster Fuller01.10.2015
Slenderness, Lightness, and Strength. From Inventions: The Patented Works of R.Buckminster Fuller, 1983
Jean-Baptiste Lassus’s Sainte-Chapelle
01.10.2015
Jean-Baptiste Lassus’s Sainte-Chapelle01.10.2015
The watercolour of the Sainte-Chapelle drawn by Lassus dates from the first years of the restoration, when the desire to restore the monument to its original thirteenth-century form was still very strong. The chapel is shown without its fifteenth-century flamboyant rose window and its exterior staircase built by Louis XII,… Read More
A Life of Their Own (1985)
28.08.2015
A Life of Their Own (1985)28.08.2015
The following has been excerpted from Staying Creative; Artistic Passion is a Lifelong Pursuit – and These Mature Masters Prove the Point. (Otto Luening, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Rudolph), December 1985. I try to find a graphic means of indicating what’s happening to the space. Space can move quickly or slowly. It… Read More
John Lautner: House and Studio for Edgar Ewing
28.08.2015
John Lautner: House and Studio for Edgar Ewing28.08.2015
On presenting himself as a potential apprentice at Taliesin to Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., Lautner heard no objection except the sly comment that he would be ‘too big for the rooms’. Everything about his approach to visualising a design speaks to the distance from which this towering figure saw the… Read More
History & Origins
21.08.2015
History & Origins21.08.2015
And these old drawings […] now have their own history, an almost enforced form of composition. And yet I wonder at the fact that they are the origin or germ of these new architectural works, which others could regard as more professional. In actual fact, invention and imagination have deeper… Read More
Erik Gunnar Asplund: The Father
14.08.2015
Erik Gunnar Asplund: The Father14.08.2015
Erik Gunnar Asplund’s son Ingemar told me that their father would pick him and his brother Hans up on Sundays to take them to the summer house. (He was then living with a woman other than their mother.) Father would make a little conversation as they made their way to… Read More
Sketch from Vézelay from Letter to Mérimée (1843)
31.07.2015
Sketch from Vézelay from Letter to Mérimée (1843)31.07.2015
From a letter to Mérimée written in 1843 from Vézelay: You, Sir, who have ceaselessly lived the life of the past, you understand the joy, the secret happiness felt when we can record in our sketchbook some of these forgotten [historical] treasures … but how much more interesting when these… Read More
Five Boxes
10.06.2015
Five Boxes10.06.2015
Line drawing — drawing without shading, cross-hatching or chiaroscuro — permits and conveys the most precise sense of accuracy of any kind of drawing. The facts are laid bare, nothing can be fudged or obscured. Leonardo used line drawing for his studies of everything from flying machines to the human… Read More
Wagnerschule
01.06.2015
Wagnerschule01.06.2015
The drawings of Emil Hoppe (1876 – 1957) and Otto Schönthal (1878–1961) attracted particular interest in the Land Marks exhibition, and people were eager for us to share them more widely. They are presented here with little comment and a few additions for context. These drawings by Emil Hoppe, Otto Schönthal and… Read More
François Soufflot le Romain: Ruins
09.02.2015
François Soufflot le Romain: Ruins09.02.2015
– Editors
This drawing, commissioned by Jacques-Germain Soufflot from his nephew in Rome, for presentation to his colleagues at the Académie Française, vindicates the revolutionary structural principles on which his own church of St Geneviève was then being slowly constructed in Paris. It does this by establishing a direct comparison with the… Read More
Potomania (1982)
08.01.2015
Potomania (1982)08.01.2015
Call it ‘Potomania’ — plants and flowers above all … a column of water cascading freely on to a little pond … the column a staff both shining and singing.
A Lung for the City (1984)
27.11.2015
A Lung for the City (1984)27.11.2015
– Cedric Price
The following has been excerpted from Cedric Price, 1984. A lung for the city. A 24-hour workshop where all can extend their knowledge and delight in learning. From its start and throughout its construction and development, all must be welcomed to observe its continuous growth and change. No area should be… Read More
competition presentation civic & municipal landscape public space DMC plan