Signature
15 February 2021
Signature15 February 2021
Zaha Hadid (1950–2016), doodle sketch, Azabu-Juban, 1986. Ink on paper from Hotel Copacabana Palace, Brasil, 150 × 105 mm. DMC 3077.1. It’s just a small loose sheet of paper ripped…
Qamutit Home
22 October 2020
Qamutit Home22 October 2020
Konstantin Ikonomidis, Qamutit, Nuuk, Greenland, 2019. Courtesy the architect. Qamutit (Inuktitut: ᖃᒧᑏᒃ): an Inuit-designed sled for transport on snow and ice. This conceptual sledge-house exhibits a catalogue of ideas and…
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove
13 June 2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove13 June 2023
…lower floor, St Mary’s Grove, London, 1954. Ink on tracing, 380 × 255 mm. DMC 3504.5. Trevor Dannatt (1920–2021), sketch plan of existing house, ground floor, St Mary’s Grove, London,…
Donate
15 March 2021
Donate15 March 2021
…donations of any amount – from students, scholars, architectural offices and university architecture departments; if you are a regular reader, we hope you might consider supporting us on a monthly…
Houses of Work and Play
30 March 2020
Houses of Work and Play30 March 2020
Álvaro Siza (1933), Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto (FAUP), Portugal, 1985. Ink and pencil on paper. © Álvaro Siza Archive – Fundação Serralves, Oporto, Portugal. The Faculty…
The Metropolitan Opera House, NYC: Invisible guests
15 October 2021
The Metropolitan Opera House, NYC: Invisible guests15 October 2021
…invisible guests come in and out at will. – Czesław Miłosz, from Ars Poetica? My father, Tad Leski, was an architect and designer for Wallace K. Harrison on many projects, including…
Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building
18 March 2016
Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building18 March 2016
Louis Kahn (1901–1974), elevation, final scheme of the Kansas City Office Building, 1972. Pencil and pastel on paper,, 915 × 610 mm. © Estate of the architect. DMC 2311. The…
Sverre Fehn and the Territorial Eye
18 May 2023
Sverre Fehn and the Territorial Eye18 May 2023
…‘deep ecology’. These two Norwegians were contemporaries, but apparently never met, and had no dialogue. Re-examining Fehn’s sketches of buildings and territories through Næss’ insights into self-identification, kinship and mutuality,…
The Sacred Games of Art
1 December 2017
The Sacred Games of Art1 December 2017
…of Patrick Lynch. In Gadamer’s terms – described in Truth and Method and The Relevance of the Beautiful – play is the key to understanding culture as generative and redemptive. It’s helpful, he suggests, to…
Land Marks: Structures for a Poetic Universe
21 March 2015
Land Marks: Structures for a Poetic Universe21 March 2015
…1799. © Eredi Aldo Rossi. If shapes can so to their own edges keep, No separation proves a being bad. – From ‘Objects’ by W.H. Auden, 1958. Superstudio (1966–1978), Infinite…
Heathrow Airport Project
25 January 2017
Heathrow Airport Project25 January 2017
…at the ICA Boston, USA, in the same year. The proposal (in the first drawing) shows an Arrivals landscape spectacularised by indoctrination booths: cricket, the NHS, weather, accents… In the…
Hélène Binet: The Outsider
19 May 2022
Hélène Binet: The Outsider19 May 2022
– Hélène Binet
…mm. Hélène Binet (1959–), The Visitor, III, 2020. Hand printed black and white silver gelatin, 400 x 400 mm. Hélène Binet (1959–), The Visitor, IV, 2020. Hand printed black and…
domestic interior