Period: c20th
Yacht Club Path
2 August 2018
Yacht Club Path2 August 2018
I The drawings have different stories. They don’t have a linear story, a beginning date and then a finished date at the end. Sometimes they are drawn in the beginning before the project is built and then continue during the construction of the project and sometimes too – actually, quite often… Read More
arq : plan, Stan Allen, Helen Mallinson, Niall Hobhouse
20 July 2018
arq : plan, Stan Allen, Helen Mallinson, Niall Hobhouse20 July 2018
arq & Drawing Matter To launch the collaboration with Drawing Matter, and in continued celebration of arq’s recent twenty-first anniversary, the first issue of Volume 22 opens with a collection of twenty-one pairs of plan drawings. Stan Allen, Niall Hobhouse, and Helen Mallinson chose the images in an intense one-day session.… Read More
A Fragment of Wright’s Great City
16 July 2018
A Fragment of Wright’s Great City16 July 2018
Wright, Wagner and the Idea of the Great City We become greater in service to the general effect, more harmonious as part of the whole.– Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘To my European Co-Workers’, 1925 ‘I came upon the Secession during the winter of 1910,’ Wright wrote in An Autobiography, noting with great… Read More
Architectural Research Quarterly: Plan
13 July 2018
Architectural Research Quarterly: Plan13 July 2018
Volume 22, Issue 1 pp. 8–40 This issue of arq introduces the new collaboration with Drawing Matter. To launch the collaboration, and in continued celebration of arq’s recent twenty-first anniversary, this issue opens with a collection of twenty-one pairs of plan drawings. Stan Allen, Niall Hobhouse, and Helen Mallinson chose the images in… Read More
Aldo Rossi Cabina Construction
10 July 2018
Aldo Rossi Cabina Construction10 July 2018
The blue and pink cabin suffers from a few structural/constructional inadequacies. The first of these to be noticed is the door which binds within in its ‘frame’ (there is no frame as such; the short strap hinges simply hang off the boarding). The vertical boards which make the door have… Read More
Freestanding: Sigurd Lewerentz
20 June 2018
Freestanding: Sigurd Lewerentz20 June 2018
Inhabiting and transforming the lozenge-like space of a long room in the heart of the Central Pavilion’s labyrinth, an installation by Petra Gipp creates a series of veiled rooms, corners and framed views, making spaces both ordered and complex. Everything is luminous. Light drops drops down from the skylights opened… Read More
Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House
26 April 2018
Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House26 April 2018
Somebody said the story about the orange is not right, but it is: he sent one of us over to the shop to buy an orange and he peeled it and took up the segments. Mogens Prip-Buus on Jørn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House
Eurolandschaft Dérive
1 April 2018
Eurolandschaft Dérive1 April 2018
The format is Japanese: a concertina sketchbook presented empty to me by Akira Suzuki shortly after the 1983 completion of our Tokyo Suzuki House design. The drawing format is also Japanese – influenced by our reading of Tokyo (documented in Western Objects + Eastern Fields, AA 1989). Tokyo is difficult for… Read More
Tony Fretton: Lisson Gallery 1
27 February 2018
Tony Fretton: Lisson Gallery 127 February 2018
84-7-1 is a singular image, a drawing of Lisson 1 seen from Lisson Street. It shows the back gallery as it was first intended – but which is not what it became, because the client kept buying land and adding to it. This sketch explores how a piece of architecture… Read More
Notes on the Sketchbook
19 February 2018
Notes on the Sketchbook19 February 2018
When we talk about the sketchbook what do we mean? Its complexity is reflected in the difficulty we experience – in many examples, at any rate – in straightforwardly attaching a name to it, for there are times it might seem to be equally a notebook, a journal, a diary,… Read More
Carlos Diniz: United States Embassy, Moscow
14 February 2018
Carlos Diniz: United States Embassy, Moscow14 February 2018
The Commons Overview These drawings were exhibited in ‘Off Location: Drawings for the US Embassy, Moscow’, an impromptu exhibition held at Pushkin House from 13–28 February 2018. In conjunction with the exhibition, curator Tim Abrahams gave a talk entitled ‘Fiction and Reality in Moscow’ at Pushkin House.
Drawings’ Conclusions
8 February 2018
Drawings’ Conclusions8 February 2018
The Campo Marzio project had its origins in a series of drawings done as far back as 1979, when I was a student at Cooper Union. I entered Cooper as a transfer student with a BA already in hand. I was originally placed in second year, but after a semester… Read More
Better with Sun from West: US Embassy Moscow, The Commons
5 February 2018
Better with Sun from West: US Embassy Moscow, The Commons5 February 2018
In an interview for the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, architect Charles Edward Bassett, the design lead in SOM’s San Francisco office, was asked by Betty J. Blum how architectural education changed in the US when modernism became accepted in architectural schools and the Beaux-Arts tradition side-lined. What happened when the… Read More
Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals
25 January 2018
Dom Hans Van Der Laan Saint Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals25 January 2018
The following text is excerpted from an interview with Hans Van der Laan and Antoine Bodar, broadcast by Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), 24 December 1988. Given that we have reduced architecture to proportions – to a matter of measurements, which is akin to solving a mathematical problem, the design has not been created visually. This… Read More
A Blueprint is… Blue
24 January 2018
A Blueprint is… Blue24 January 2018
A common error in looking at architectural drawings is to mistake mechanical reproductions for originals. Original and copy drawings both physically consist of two elements: the material (like ink) and the support (usually paper). But – and it may seem obvious to say – lines on paper are made by… Read More
Florian Beigel & Kisa Kawakami
19 January 2018
Florian Beigel & Kisa Kawakami19 January 2018
– Florian Beigel and Philip Christou
Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Yokohama, Japan, 1994 The 500-metre-long, gently sloping body of the new pier lifts itself up over the water. It glows from the inside like the body of a transparent fish with all its internal organs visible. A model was made with clear perspex and… Read More
Studio Mumbai: Saatrasta-Mahindra Tape Drawing
14 January 2018
Studio Mumbai: Saatrasta-Mahindra Tape Drawing14 January 2018
The idea of using tape drawings originated for climatic reasons: India goes through a five-month monsoon season each year, and during this time it is very humid. For us this meant that the drawings we were producing, which were printed on paper, had a very short lifespan. Lines would slowly… Read More
Yona Friedman: Space-chain Structures
11 January 2018
Yona Friedman: Space-chain Structures11 January 2018
‘Proteinic structures’, ‘proteinic chains’, ‘space chains’ and ‘iconostase’ are different names for similar structures, proposed and varied over the years by Yona Friedman. [1] They originally have in common a single material, metal, and a principle: the possibility of an infinite architecture. Such an unrealistic but visionary use of giant… Read More
The Politics of the Image
5 January 2018
The Politics of the Image5 January 2018
– Maria S. Giudici, Joseph Mercer, Florian Scheucher, Keranie Theodosiou, Livia Wang, Sophie Williams and Feifei Zhou
My course, The Politics of the Image at the Royal College of Art, drew on the Drawing Matter Collection amongst others to explore the construction of images since the Renaissance. This construction has allowed a crafty lie to evolve, be challenged and ultimately influence reality – albeit not always in straightforward ways.… Read More
Parataxis
28 December 2017
Parataxis28 December 2017
‘Whatever elements that may come to hand or that are selected from the profusion of materials within reach, are combined with words to create a simple poetic image. This should amuse, disturb, mystify or provoke reflection. These images above all should entertain – the only sure road to appreciation.’ Man… Read More
Behind the Lines 2
19 December 2017
Behind the Lines 219 December 2017
An idle (and very fanciful) speculation on the origin of a drawing Gloria Gigliotti, hosiery buyer at Saks Fifth Avenue, looked at the drawing that Paddy O’Neil from the Art Department had bought in to her office that morning. She had asked him, for a quick $5.00 on the side,… Read More
Herbert Matter
27 November 2017
Herbert Matter27 November 2017
This is the work of the Swiss photographer and designer Herbert Matter, who after a short career in New York had moved to California in 1943 with his wife, the American painter and art critic Mercedes Carles. Both were friends and associates of Fernand Leger, with whom Herbert had been… Read More
Richard J. Neutra
10 August 2018
Richard J. Neutra10 August 2018
– Nicholas Olsberg
‘Richard J. Neutra has carried on the Wagner tradition of experimentation in new forms, materials and methods of construction… an impetus to the intelligent solution of new problems.’ Ernestine M. Fantl on the Corona Avenue School, ‘Modern Architecture in California’ (Typescript Mimeograph, MoMA Archives, 1935) Just before 6 o’clock on… Read More
plan section elevation publication education construction drawing DMC