Tag: civic & municipal

Cedric Price: Westal Market Stall Prototypes

Cedric Price: Westal Market Stall Prototypes

Editors

The way I remember it, a couple of years after the transfer of the ownership of the major part of the paper archive (over which I had been involved, as a kind of mediator), Cedric asked me to help with dismantling the Store Street studio, where he was giving up the lease.… 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

A New Administration Center For Los Angeles (1936)

A New Administration Center For Los Angeles (1936)

William Hamilton

Excerpted from ‘Architect and Engineer’ 1936 January by William Hamilton.

New Welfare Island (1978)

New Welfare Island (1978)

Rem Koolhaas

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)

Gallaratese & Fagnano Olona (1976)

Aldo Rossi

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

L’Invasion de la Viande (1980)

L’Invasion de la Viande (1980)

Elie Delamare-Debouteville

As part of an imagined intervention in the subterranean spaces of the redeveloped Les Halles, Jean Criton’s project describes the new Metro station invaded, in a sinister process of parthenogenesis, by the meat from the Pavillon de la Boucherie, which had stood on the site until its controversial demolition eight… Read More

The Decline of Architectural Drawing (1859)

The Decline of Architectural Drawing (1859)

C. H. Smith

The Royal Academy’s 1859 summer exhibition, combined with a number of architectural drawings on display in Conduit Street, left a less than positive impression on critic C. H. Smith. In an article published by The Builder, Smith describes what he sees as a decline in the quality of the architectural… Read More

Charles Barry: Good and Bad Manners in Architecture

Charles Barry: Good and Bad Manners in Architecture

David Blissett

Architectural manners are […] known by a quality which money cannot buy, and which can le­nd distinction not only to the greatest building but to the smallest. T. A. Edwards, Good and Bad Manners in Architecture, 1924, Preface, vi. There is often an elegance in architectural simplicity that goes unrecognised… Read More

Postcard from Nowhere (Counterswimming)

Postcard from Nowhere (Counterswimming)

Teresa Stoppani

Sixteen swim in synchrony. Bright red trunks, blue swim caps, in a perfectly choreographed 4 x 4 grid of bodies in motion. They swim in the shallow pale blue pool that contains them, as it floats in the ocean. They are about to collide with a dock that is too… Read More

Yasmeen Lari: Drawn Closer

Yasmeen Lari: Drawn Closer

Helen Thomas

In 2005, earthquakes in northern Pakistan killed 80,000 people. This was an eye-opener for me, and I was drawn to work with these remote, impoverished mountain communities, to help to rebuild their lives. Having retired from conventional architectural practice, and this was something I’d never done before. Unlike NGOs offering… Read More

Colin Rowe: Piazza Augusto Imperatore (1995)

Colin Rowe: Piazza Augusto Imperatore (1995)

Colin Rowe

– Colin Rowe, 1995. Excerpted from Colin Rowe, As I Was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Alexander Caragonne (London: MIT Press, 1996).

Leto Litho Leningrad

Leto Litho Leningrad

William Firebrace

Joseph Brodsky, in his short essay ‘A Guide to a Renamed City’ (1979), wrote: The characteristic features of Leningraders are: bad teeth (because of lack of vitamins during the siege), clarity in pronunciation of sibilants, self-mockery, and a degree of haughtiness towards the rest of the country. Mentally this city… Read More