Period: c20th
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’
23.07.2020
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’23.07.2020
The unbuilt half-dome (referred to by the architect as the ‘cupula’) at the Quinta da Malagueira is the subject of a protracted design process that has lasted for over four decades. At the start of 2020, Álvaro Siza sent a drawing of the half-dome to Drawing Matter accompanied by letter… Read More
The Birds’ Morning Hymn (1929)
10.07.2020
The Birds’ Morning Hymn (1929)10.07.2020
From a letter to The Times of April 18, 1929: At this season of the resurrection of Nature — that ever-fresh miracle — one thing happens that even keen bird-lovers seem hardly to appreciate to the full. I mean the birds’ Morning Hymn. We have all heard vaguely about ‘Bird… Read More
Siza at Sixteen
10.07.2020
Siza at Sixteen10.07.2020
– Manuel Montenegro and Álvaro Siza
Pouco a pouco, quase sem dar por isso, o carvão começou a não partir, o papel a não manchar, o miolo de pão a manter a plasticidade, o fôlego a aumentar. E a confiança. Slowly but steadily, unwittingly, the lead began to not break, paper to not stain, the bread… Read More
Notes on Port Royal, Jamaica
07.07.2020
Notes on Port Royal, Jamaica07.07.2020
– Paul Cox
My parents Oliver and Jean Cox were devoted ‘Jamaicophiles’, having worked on many projects in the country since the 1960s. One of the most enduring and absorbing was a proposed redevelopment of Port Royal as a renewal and upgrade of the historic city, rebuilding and restoring while making an interesting… Read More
The Conservative (1941)
06.07.2020
The Conservative (1941)06.07.2020
All along the wide stony high street of Chipping Campden one is aware of stopped clocks. Time has been strenuously and persistently defied – almost successfully. Even the public telephone box – after a short struggle with the Post Office – has been allowed to wear the protective colouring of… Read More
The Real and Imagined Worlds of Álvaro Siza
26.06.2020
The Real and Imagined Worlds of Álvaro Siza26.06.2020
Inside the cover of Álvaro Siza’s sketchbooks, there is a whole world: the real and the imagined. In his personal registers of the real, Siza accepts the world as it is. He uses drawing in a playful but productive way, learns when he apprehends, absorbs when drawing. This process of… Read More
Mies: The Berlin Building Expostition (1974)
25.06.2020
Mies: The Berlin Building Expostition (1974)25.06.2020
The following text is excerpted from Oppositions 2 (1974): 86–91. The Berlin Building Exposition of 1931 was the largest of its kind ever to be held. With Teutonic thoroughness every material, every method, every theory that had to do with building was shown in the Exposition. The result of this thoroughness, plus… Read More
The Story of the Pool (1978)
19.06.2020
The Story of the Pool (1978)19.06.2020
In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these… Read More
James Gowan: The Sheet for the Job
17.06.2020
James Gowan: The Sheet for the Job17.06.2020
The elevation of the Engineering Faculty in Leicester, a building by James Stirling and James Gowan, is in the centre of the tracing paper: a drawing composed of vertical, horizontal and diagonal black lines. A series of height lines and dimensions have been applied effectively, showing that the construction is… Read More
Stirling at Stuttgart: Rear View / Up Views
15.06.2020
Stirling at Stuttgart: Rear View / Up Views15.06.2020
Rear Views I joined the Stirling office in September 1976, working late hours through the length of four years until my return to Dublin towards the end of 1980. Straight out of college and into my first proper job, the critical years in my formation as an architect. I had… Read More
Mies: The Horizon
14.06.2020
Mies: The Horizon14.06.2020
Perusing the slides I had taken of the reconstructed pavilion, I found it difficult to decide which way up they went — an artefact of photography, no doubt. Then I changed my mind. It was not an artefact of photography, but a property of the pavilion itself, a property of… Read More
Ove Arup: Engineering the World
12.06.2020
Ove Arup: Engineering the World12.06.2020
My introduction to the work of Ove Arup, the great Anglo-Danish structural engineer whose firm made both the Sydney Opera House and the Pompidou Centre in Paris buildable, came over the course of three years as I walked, almost every day, across his Kingsgate foot-bridge in Durham. This is the… Read More
Thomas Henry Wyatt’s Brook House
12.06.2020
Thomas Henry Wyatt’s Brook House12.06.2020
There is no building that tells the social and aesthetic story of Park Lane better than Brook House. From its beginnings as a scrappy country lane (‘Tyburn Lane’) in the eighteenth century, Park Lane rose to become the millionaires’ row of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and went on in… Read More
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer
11.06.2020
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer11.06.2020
This text was originally published in Architecture through Drawing. Drawn Closer is a year-long collaboration between Domus and Drawing Matter, edited by Sarah Handelman. Each issue of the magazine features one architect discussing a drawing which they recognise as a transformative moment in their work. Domus 2020 is guest-edited by David Chipperfield. I began using… Read More
Welfare Palace Hotel (1978)
04.06.2020
Welfare Palace Hotel (1978)04.06.2020
In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these… Read More
Instead of an Article (1958)
03.06.2020
Instead of an Article (1958)03.06.2020
‘As I cannot write an article, this dialogue is intended to replace it. It is only partially authentic, but that, of course, is also the case with the classical dialogues.’ Alvar Aalto in Arkkitehti-Arkitekten (1958): Sigfried Giedion: ‘What do I see, old friend, are you planning to write?’ Alvar Aalto:… Read More
W. E. B. Du Bois’ visionary infographics
02.06.2020
W. E. B. Du Bois’ visionary infographics02.06.2020
In 1900 W.E.B. Du Bois travelled to the Exposition Universelle in Paris to present the ‘American Negro’, an exhibition that sought ‘to give, in as systematic and compact a form as possible, the history and present condition of a large group of human beings’. In addition to Du Bois, then… Read More
Michael Graves’ Rooftop Village (1985)
01.06.2020
Michael Graves’ Rooftop Village (1985)01.06.2020
excerpted from The Critical Edge: Controversy in Recent American Architecture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985)
Architectural Typefaces
29.05.2020
Architectural Typefaces29.05.2020
It is a drawing of a C. A rather normal looking C, a bit condensed perhaps. Its thick and thin parts are distributed along a vertical axis, rather than a diagonal one, so in typographic terms it is a modern C. To me it also looks a bit British, because it only… Read More
Working with Asplund
29.05.2020
Working with Asplund29.05.2020
Asplund’s office was two floors up in an old building in Regeringsgatan, behind the NK department store. There were civil engineers there and Asplund collaborated with them as well. They worked on regional planning. Asplund’s office was a very smart room, a chapel for meditation you might say. It was… Read More
New Welfare Island (1978)
27.05.2020
New Welfare Island (1978)27.05.2020
In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these projects are… Read More
Gallaratese & Fagnano Olona (1976)
26.05.2020
Gallaratese & Fagnano Olona (1976)26.05.2020
Two fragments of texts paired with two fragments of process. Writing in the May 1976 issue of Architecture + Urbanism, Rossi reflects on two projects: the Gallaratese Housing Complex, Milan and the Fagnano Olona in the Lombardy region. In both of the drawings placed alongside the architect’ s writing, the forms… Read More
Eisenman: House VI (1985)
21.05.2020
Eisenman: House VI (1985)21.05.2020
The design of House VI was partly the result of Eisenman’s attempt to reconcile linguistic theories with architectural design. His interest in the work of Noam Chomsky, especially his theories of syntax, led to the investigation of possible analogies between language and architecture, and particularly the syntactic aspects of architectural… Read More
OMA in Scheveningen
22.07.2020
OMA in Scheveningen22.07.2020
– Willem Jan Neutelings
Scheveningen is a reef on which different architectonic and urban visions have run ashore. – Rem Koolhaas [1] What a surprise to see this 40 year old drawing! I made it as a young collaborator of OMA in Rotterdam in 1982. It is an analytic sketch in ink and color… Read More
topographic/cartographic survey Extracts: Where to Begin? concept & diagram DMC culture record urban form