Tag: alternative histories (project)

Adaptations: A Teaching Studio at Cornell

Adaptations: A Teaching Studio at Cornell

Roz Barr

Options Studio was an Elective Module at Cornell University led by Roz Barr. The act of making means engaging with an idea that can be made, unmade, and reconsidered before being realised. Model-making has a critical role in formulating and realising an idea. Materiality and form are developed through discussions… Read More

Zahalternative Histories: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid

Zahalternative Histories: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid

John Tuomey

From a sheet of sketches by Zaha Hadid to rock formations at Ines Meáin and St Brigid’s Well, in this short film John Tuomey explains the thinking behind O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Alternative Histories model. This commentary is the first in a series organised by the Irish Architectural Archive. The series,… Read More

Startha Éagsula: GKMP architects on Charles Moore

Startha Éagsula: GKMP architects on Charles Moore

GKMP architects

The sketch sections by Charles Moore are dense with ideas. They suggest an intriguing disparity between the exterior form and the interior space, a type of Baroque poché created by a thicket of lines. The structure is tree-like, with trunks and branches shaping the space of the undercroft. Our model… Read More

Startha Éagsula: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid

Startha Éagsula: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid

Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey

Around the time she made this super-skinny scheme for Berlin, Zaha came to Dublin to lecture at the National Gallery. She showed her design for the Taoiseach’s House, breaking out of the walled garden in the Phoenix Park, alongside her breakthrough project for the Hong Kong Peak and other funny… Read More

Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan

Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan

Thomas O’Brien

There is a ramp;There is a staggering of volumes in plan and section, in out, in out;There is a tapering toward the top;The emphasis is on the public ambulatory spaces;There are people ambulating about;The proportion and judgement of the volumes appear to be empathetic to people;The undercroft condition is important… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Paul Dillon Architects on Florian Beigel and Philip Christou

Startha Éagsula: Paul Dillon Architects on Florian Beigel and Philip Christou

Paul Dillon

This drawing is a development sketch for their proposed part in the rebuilding of the last remaining shanty town outside of Seoul, South Korea. It remains unbuilt. The model is instructional, suggestive of a final building, uses found, recycled materials. The use is not specified. The process of building is… Read More

Startha Éagsula: David Leech Architects on Barthélemy Enfantin

Startha Éagsula: David Leech Architects on Barthélemy Enfantin

David Leech

The colourful ink and pencil drawing of Barthélemy Enfantin seeks to establish a set of rules for a new open metropolis. Without site, set out in all axes, and with the edges of the drawing alluding to a non-determined repetition, it was possibly drawn for continuous reuse and translation. Like… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Steve Larkin Architects on Walter Pichler

Startha Éagsula: Steve Larkin Architects on Walter Pichler

Steve Larkin

This text has been excerpted from Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories (2020), a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. Friedrich… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Níall McLaughlin Architects on Basil Spence

Startha Éagsula: Níall McLaughlin Architects on Basil Spence

Níall McLaughlin

This text has been excerpted from Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories (2020), a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. The… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Elizabeth Hatz on Frank Lloyd Wright

Startha Éagsula: Elizabeth Hatz on Frank Lloyd Wright

Elizabeth Hatz

a vanished gardenthe oriental plan eclipses an obsession with circlesall spaces on their way to evaporateany momentthe terrible weight of void implodes into a dome turned sidewayson its way down, breast-feeding earthmidway of life – garden of deathlight words lift like invisible balloonsthe perspective of cantilevered canopies is relentlessin heavy… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Grafton Architects on Paulo Mendes da Rocha

Startha Éagsula: Grafton Architects on Paulo Mendes da Rocha

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara

This text has been excerpted from Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories (2020), a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. We… Read More

Alternative Histories: Hild und K Architekten on James Gowan

Alternative Histories: Hild und K Architekten on James Gowan

“Form follows fender” In James Gowan’s parallel projections we were particularly interested in their spatial qualities, and how the form could develop. Seen as a negative space, it could be a staggered courtyard. James Gowan used a car shape as a reference. By extracting the theme and duplicating the shape… Read More

The Matter of Drawing

The Matter of Drawing

Freddie Phillipson

The Primitive Hut staggers into three dimensions. Wiry pen scribbles go technicolour, underground. A vermiculated arch becomes an intricately hollowed monolith. A coat of fur replaces the ragged edge where plaster gave way to brick. We are not in a hall of mirrors; instead we are looking at a group… Read More

Alternative Histories: Knapkiewicz & Fickert on Charles Barry

Alternative Histories: Knapkiewicz & Fickert on Charles Barry

Axel Fickert and Kaschka Knapkiewicz

Even though we live in a different culture and the world has changed, our rites and experiences have evolved. The incredible might and strength of these spaces touches us deeply. It is a splendid sequence of spaces that leads to the inner sanctuary of the temple of Amon. A sequence… Read More

Alternative Histories: Professur Lehnerer ETH & Klara Bindl On SUperstudio

Alternative Histories: Professur Lehnerer ETH & Klara Bindl On SUperstudio

Alternative Histories: Raamwerk on Tony Fretton

Alternative Histories: Raamwerk on Tony Fretton

Alternative Histories: Sam Jacob Studio on Archizoom

Alternative Histories: Sam Jacob Studio on Archizoom

What might the purpose of an alternative history be? How might we collaborate with the past? What passes from one generation to another or from one hand to another? Is the construction of a (new) model of an (old) project a way of producing an alternative past? Or different present?… Read More

Alternative Histories: Veldwerk Architecten on Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont

Alternative Histories: Veldwerk Architecten on Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont

Paper Mountain Like the models it displays, the paper mountain exhibition scenography finds its origins in a historic drawing from the Drawing Matter archive. Gabriel Dumont’s section of a theatre auditorium and balcony seating, drawn c.1770, proposes a structure that holds the audience as if they were godly statues of a stacked temple, suspended… Read More

Alternative Histories: Nikolaus Bienefeld on James Gowan

Alternative Histories: Nikolaus Bienefeld on James Gowan

Die ersten Modelle einer Entwurfsskizze verkörpern den architektonischen Gedanken.So, wie die Skizze durch die Art des Striches, der Farbigkeit, der Detaillierung eine oder viele Interpretationen ermöglicht, so eröffnet die Wahl und der Umgang mit dem Material des Modells eine größtmögliche Offenheit im architektonischen Prozess. The first models of a design sketch… Read More

Alternative Histories: NoAarchitecten on Álvaro Siza

Alternative Histories: NoAarchitecten on Álvaro Siza

When we look at Siza’s drawing we try to forget the project we know. We see the beautiful irregularity of a pencil perimeter, defined by obstacles of all sorts. Within it, the architect added straight lines, an attempt to bring order and create a place to dwell, to find shelter.… Read More

Alternative Histories: Noreile Breen on Louis Kahn

Alternative Histories: Noreile Breen on Louis Kahn

Kahn’s drawing is composed of solid and dotted hard pencil lines with red hatching on coloured paper; conventions representing elements above, below and through a cut line. Parallel lines and breaks between lines give an indication of scale. Curious, massive, triangular, hollow and inaccessible forms meet broken lines in a… Read More

Alternative Histories: Oda Pälmke Architektin on Archizoom

Alternative Histories: Oda Pälmke Architektin on Archizoom

Alternative Histories: muf architecture/art on John Hejduk

Alternative Histories: muf architecture/art on John Hejduk

John Hejduk’s drawing sketches a house for a couple, or two coupled houses, composed of two almost identical small buildings connected to each other by a walkway which holds each house at a distance apart. Each house has its own spiral stair for independent movement and what looks like its… Read More

Alternative Histories: Monadnock on James Stirling

Alternative Histories: Monadnock on James Stirling

All fragments of this illusionary city by Stirling are once more getting aroused.A re-assemblage brings the possibility for orchestrating a vertical narrative instead of the intended horizontal scheme.Gaining iconic strength, this reinterpretation of a reinterpretation – in an attempt of finding a new cohesion – opens up for new gestures.Gestures which are… Read More