Urban Form seminar with AA and LSE students held at Drawing Matter.
I believe it was in February 2024, at some noisy event, that I agreed to deliver a handful of seminars to AA and LSE students around the topic of urban form. Niall had tempted me with the provision of fifty or so drawings from the archive, but I could take it from there–no rules.
A few days later a package arrived with a set of reproductions, many more than fifty, with few that felt irrelevant enough to take out of the running. I set it aside for the next three months, took time over the summer to stare at the horizon and wonder how on earth I was going to reconcile Nobuo Sekine’s ‘Phase of Nothingness’ with Domenico Fontana’s ‘Raising of the Vatican obelisk’ beyond the obvious. So began an extraordinary game of association, played across topics and chronologies.
The five sessions that followed in the Autumn presented five readings of the city, framing it as an idea or ideology; a terrain (real and vague); as theatre; as a rhythm or network; and as a lived metabolism. Each session brought together drawings in new combinations and promoted questions around how ideas communicate across centuries and cultural contexts. Doing away with the usual interpretations and chronologies, we were at the mercy of the table at Drawing Matter–covered with the odd and the extraordinary. As we talked, Niall, Jesper, and Rosie added wild cards–drawings that informed what we were talking about, or simply felt similar enough to be in conversation with them.
It was a beautiful experience for all of us–like an antidote to the algorithm in which instinctive and occasionally absurd connections could be made, and fresh ideas hatched. Most importantly it gave us the opportunity to offer up a history that could feed new work rather than being kept reverentially in aspic–to ask why and what if–to discuss and handle work that would otherwise feel like it occupied an entirely different plain.
I’m now waiting for my next impossible challenge from Niall so we can plot even more serendipitous collisions, and anticipate the inevitable depth of questions and the peals of laughter they produce.
At each of the five sessions, the students were asked to discuss and interrogate the drawings they encountered at Drawing Matter, with the aim of producing a drawing and a text for the end of the semester at the AA. This work is an extension of the explorations, narratives, and questions around the form of the city, formulated over the seminars. Below is a selection of students’ drawn works paired with extracts of their texts, and alongside the original drawings they engaged with in the archive.
You can view the seminar’s initial brief here and the collection of materials discussed here.
Drawing by Ariel Koltun-Fromm.Alison and Peter Smithson, Urban Re-identification Project, Golden Lane Housing Project, 1951–1952. Original collage, photograph, pen and ink gouache, 285 × 320 mm. DMC 3371.
‘Tippex is meant to correct errors in typing, to “white-out” misprints and type over again, a sort of crude palimpsest that is meant to hide its existence. But tippex isn’t magic. It is a material, and so it leaves traces in its destructive path of erasure. It is quite plain to see where the Smithsons, unsatisfied with the extent of destruction depicted in their found photograph of bombed Coventry, blacked and whited out the rubble even more to give their estate the clearest breadth with which to land from the heavens.’ Ariel Koltun-Fromm
‘Nature reclaims the pillars, whose once- pristine surfaces have worn and cracked over time. This speculative transformation captures the dynamic conflict between endurance and entropy, posing deep issues about the relationship between architecture and nature.’ Gregory Hau
Drawing by Gregory Hau.Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont (1715–1791), Plan, Garden following the ground plan of St Peter’s, Rome , 1769. pen, ink, pencil and watercolour on 2 joined sheets of watermarked laid paper , 710 × 402 mm. DMC 2632.
Drawing by Jan Macbean.Wilson, Peter. Aerial View (Part 2) Ponte Dell ‘Accademia. 1985-6. Mixed media, hand-colouring over print base, laid on card. Drawing Matter Archive.420 x 297 mm
‘The crossing unfolds as a procession between tectonic icons. The movement through the forms animates them as urban devices for ad hoc and involuntary performance in the gaze of the watchtower.’ Jan Macbean
‘A tension between artificial islands as urban forms in contrast to the organic composition of natural island through the extraction the unseen layer of socio-spatial commentary, critiquing the action = reaction force of urban form and social structure and socio-economic underpinnings. It metaphorically examines how capital-driven ideals construct artificial islands to create exclusive and commodified spaces while raising concerns about their effects on cultural identity, social interaction and ecological balance. Presenting urban planning and architecture as active agents in forming social relationships and hierarchies.’ Mary Zhou
Drawing by Mary Zhou.Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vriesendorp, Medusa Raft, Trial proof , 1978. Screenprint. DMC 3000.11
Drawing by Leo Schapiro.Mario Asprucci, Plan and elevation, Possible plan Napoleonic cemetery in Pineta Sachetti, Italy, c.1800. Pencil, pen, ink and wash on laid paper, another sheet attached verso, 650 × 490 mm. DMC 2607r.
‘This work challenges the perception of suburban landscapes as banal and devoid of meaning. By layering abstraction, symbolism, and monumentality onto the suburban form, it reimagines these spaces as sites of cultural and spiritual significance.’ Leo Schapiro
‘In Ciceronelettronico, individuals are surrounded by screens and devices, bombarded by advertisements and media content designed to promote the life of consumption. This reflects the psychological effects of commodity culture, where people are no longer participants in the urban environment but passive consumers shaped by the constant flow of information and goods.’ Ka Lam
Drawing by Ka Lam.Ugo La Pietra (1938), Ciceronelettronico, 1961. Silver gelatin print, 240 × 300 mm. DMC 1759.
Drawing by Damasine Raemdonck.James Bunstone Bunning, Isometric, Proposed Improvements in the Neighbourhood of Smithfield, 1851. Chromolithograph, 460 × 655 mm. DMC 3415.
‘It challenges architecture’s role in shaping societal ideals and demands a reevaluation of our relationship with consumption, ethics, and the environment. Through transparency, it seeks to disrupt the invisibility that enables harmful practices, inviting society to confront the true cost of its habits.’ Damasine Raemdonck
‘This imagined intervention critiques the rigidity and imposition of modernist ideals on historic urban environments. The cube, as an archetype of rationality and order, symbolises the tension between utopian architectural ambitions and the lived reality of cities.’ Steven Xia
Drawing by Steven Xia.Superstudio (1966–1978), ‘Flooding in dry ice’ (one of fourteen images), Graz, 1971. Printed map on card with superimposed shading and strips, 500 × 645 mm. DMC 2156.1.
Dr Ingrid Schroder is a British-American architect and academic and Head of the Architectural Association. She had previously held the position of Director of the MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (MAUD) at the University of Cambridge.
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