Period: c20th
26 Kingly Street Co-Op
21 June 2021
26 Kingly Street Co-Op21 June 2021
– Editors
Throughout the 1960s, the Artists’ Own Gallery at 26 Kingly Street in Soho held exhibitions, events and gigs. It was run by a group of artists, including Keith Albarn and his wife, Hazel, who exhibited her work there. Malcolm McLaren presented the first public showing of his work at the Gallery… Read More
The Language of Architecture: Peter Märkli’s system of proportion
15 June 2021
The Language of Architecture: Peter Märkli’s system of proportion15 June 2021
Peter Märkli’s hand-drawn section of the ancient monument Hagia Sophia (532–7) is part of a working process developed alongside his design work. The output is a collection of investigative drawings that document sacred archetypal buildings, and articulate his resolved thesis that ‘architecture has a language’. The drawing illustrates a system… Read More
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh
15 June 2021
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh15 June 2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
The Future City
9 June 2021
The Future City9 June 2021
Antonio Sant’Elia foresees the technological cities of the mid to late 20th century. High-rise towers shooting skyward, train lines and highways articulated as horizontally streaking into vanishing points, and aeroplanes arriving and departing omnidirectionally. Similarly, Winold Reiss’s Future City: Study for a Mural, is an homage to technological advancement, and… Read More
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh
7 June 2021
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh7 June 2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
Cartographies of the Imagination
4 June 2021
Cartographies of the Imagination4 June 2021
– Kirsty Badenoch and Sayan Skandarajah
Drawing place is illusory. Maps may begin as transcriptions of a worldly order – a semblance of truth and objectivity – but in doing so, become acts of world-building that both belong to and are entirely removed from their starting point. In 2019, we first visited Shatwell Farm in the… Read More
This Blue Love: Aldo Rossi in Samos in late Summer 1989
2 June 2021
This Blue Love: Aldo Rossi in Samos in late Summer 19892 June 2021
In his voyage to Samos in the Summer of 1989 Aldo Rossi gathered a collection of fragments in accordance with a Palladian education. The image repeats itself, following what Johns had written in 1984: ‘I like to repeat an image in another medium to observe the play between the two:… Read More
Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church
1 June 2021
Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church1 June 2021
Up until the turn of the twentieth century architectural renderings tended to be created for clients early in the design process to give them an idea of how a proposed building would look. At that point however they began to be used more widely for publicity purposes as well, thanks… Read More
Hans Poelzig: Decorating the Empty Centre
1 June 2021
Hans Poelzig: Decorating the Empty Centre1 June 2021
‘Artists such as Poelzig, prevented from building in real life, have been driven to create Expressionist cinema architecture […] But in the long run, pasteboard fantasy creations […] can never be satisfying fodder for the architect; he has an inner urge to conceive and erect buildings in which real people… Read More
68½ degrees, Sverre Fehn and the Nordic Pavilion: Review & Excerpt
26 May 2021
68½ degrees, Sverre Fehn and the Nordic Pavilion: Review & Excerpt26 May 2021
Review By preserving the trees on the site within his pavilion in the Giardini, Sverre Fehn offered Venice an insight into a unique Nordic sensitivity towards nature and the environment. He tempered the harsh Mediterranean sun to evoke the horizontal light of the Baltic through a spectacularly innovative technical design… Read More
Fernand Pouillon’s Survey of the Abbey of Le Thoronet
17 May 2021
Fernand Pouillon’s Survey of the Abbey of Le Thoronet17 May 2021
The following text by Oscar Mather is excerpted from Issue 6 of the Journal of Civic Architecture, edited by Patrick Lynch: https://www.canalsidepress.com/joca-issue-6/. Fernand Pouillon insisted throughout his life that his sole concern in architecture was construction, and he described himself as a maître d’œuvre, in a sense closest to the… Read More
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City
12 May 2021
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City12 May 2021
Hans Hollein’s city structures look awry to someone familiar with his retail work. In the time that these drawings were made, Hollein completed his UC Berkeley degree, travelled across the USA, and did an exhibition with Walter Pichler in Austria. His most influential visit was to the Native American pueblos.… Read More
Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)
11 May 2021
Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)11 May 2021
In 1918, when the First World War ended, Eric Gill was in his late forties and completing the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral. He was soon in demand to design and sculpt war memorials. Gill would create simple memorials listing the names of the fallen for both the… Read More
The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish
10 May 2021
The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish10 May 2021
A phenomenological reading of ‘bridge’ would not prioritise function (crossing) but this suspended moment. – Peter Wilson [1] A fish out of water, a lady in thought, floating ‘wilderness’. Things first have to be separated from each other so as to be united later on. [2] Peter Wilson’s drawings of… Read More
Insignificance 1: Discipline
4 May 2021
Insignificance 1: Discipline4 May 2021
The space of the architectural imagination resides within the discourses of line. This space defines the boundaries of a practice of conceptualising the laws of the place [1] whereby through an array of ordinances, the architectural line constitutes ‘the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically and to analyse… Read More
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)
3 May 2021
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)3 May 2021
This text is an excerpt from Mikhail Bulgakov’s series of short vignettes that appeared under the overarching title ‘Golden City’ and were serialised in the Berlin-based Russian migrant ‘Nakanune’ newspaper between 30 September and 14 October 1923. Bulgakov was commissioned to write an account of the first and only All-Russian… Read More
The Beaux-Arts Tradition
29 April 2021
The Beaux-Arts Tradition29 April 2021
– Basile Baudez and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger
The following text has been excerpted from Living with Architecture as Art, the recently published catalogue of Peter May’s collection of drawings, models and architectural artefacts. The catalogue is edited by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger and published in two generously illustrated volumes. The first volume includes essays by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Basile Baudez,… Read More
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness
27 April 2021
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness27 April 2021
– Editors
With thanks to Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this tribute to Sekine written on the first anniversary of the artist’s death (linked here).
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing
26 April 2021
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing26 April 2021
How we look at architectural drawings is an inherently complicated topic. The issue arises from what we understand to appear and disappear on the page. The field of architecture has spent little time talking about what we see (and don’t see) on the surface of the drawing itself. One could… Read More
Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)
26 April 2021
Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)26 April 2021
Filmed in 1964, Ron Parks’ documentary on the newly completed Engineering Department at Leicester catches James Stirling and James Gowan at a moment of professional triumph and personal crisis. Their building was being applauded the world-over – Parks’ film had been commissioned by the American Institute of Architects, to mark its… Read More
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material
21 April 2021
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material21 April 2021
– Editors
The following quotations are from ‘Mein Stoff für Fassaden (My Facade Material)’, a lecture delivered online by Peter Märkli to open a series of five talks for the Architecture Foundation. The quotations are presented here in a loose fashion, some treated as aphorisms about design, others illustrated with drawings from… Read More
The Vitruvian Man: with Fresh Eyes
14 April 2021
The Vitruvian Man: with Fresh Eyes14 April 2021
‘The Vitruvian Man of Leonardo da Vinci as a model of innovative entrepreneurship at the intersection of business, art and technology’ is shown in the first image. This is a ‘modern’ interpretation of the Renaissance drawing as a business model as published in the Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2017. An… Read More
The Architecture of Nothingness: Analysing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple
12 April 2021
The Architecture of Nothingness: Analysing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple12 April 2021
The Architecture of Nothingness: Drawing the Drawings As architects we have learned to read drawings almost instantly. At a glance we see what the spaces feel like, what it will be like to move around the building and perhaps even get a sense of the appropriateness of the structure. This ‘presentational’ way… Read More
Insignificance 3: Mourning Work
9 June 2021
Insignificance 3: Mourning Work9 June 2021
– Gordon Shrigley
All drawings contain traces of all previously drawn mediations. [1] All drawings are silent acts of memorialising (by employing inter-subjective readings of iconography, lineage, parody, reverie and reflexivity) what has been drawn before, or thought to have been so, or simply, what has been, consciously misplaced. [2] The text above… Read More
insignificance (editorial series) DMC