Tag: DMC

Behind the Lines 12

Behind the Lines 12

Philippa Lewis

1870Colonel James Clifton-Brown, newly established at Holmbush, his Regency country house in Colgate, West Sussex, has political ambitions – namely, the parliamentary seat for Horsham. He observes that the villagers have only a small cramped chapel in which to fulfil their ambitions to be good Christians. The chapel is not… Read More

John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero

John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero

Stan Allen

Sometime in 1981, while I was working on my final thesis project at the Cooper Union, John Hejduk set me a drawing exercise. We had been discussing the spatial implications of the 90-degree axonometric. [1] Hejduk had a very particular understanding of this drawing type, which involved folding or hinging… Read More

Gio Ponti: ‘Come for Porchetta’

Gio Ponti: ‘Come for Porchetta’

Niall Hobhouse

The Milanese architect Gio Ponti typically arrived at his office very early in the morning and would use the quiet interlude before his colleagues appeared to write a succession of letters – to friends and associates, to clients and contractors, to his associate editors at Domus or Stile, to his fellow architects Le… 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

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

Alternative Histories: Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten on Alvar Aalto

Alternative Histories: Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten on Alvar Aalto

Die Zeichnung zum Rathaus und Theater Jyväskylä bot uns weniger Anleitung für unsere Arbeit am Projekt alternative history, sondern eröffnete vielmehr einen Imaginationsraum – nicht zuletzt, weil der markante Rathausturm im Entwurf von Aalto gar nicht realisiert wurde. Unsere Recherche führte uns deshalb bald weiter. Über die Ansicht von Aaltos Malereien… Read More

Alternative Histories: Dierendonckblancke Architecten on Jean and HENRI Prouvé

Alternative Histories: Dierendonckblancke Architecten on Jean and HENRI Prouvé

Alternative Histories: AMUNT on Adolf Loos

Alternative Histories: AMUNT on Adolf Loos

Between 1925 and 1926, Adolf Loos designed a bourgeois villa with a salon, studio, rooms for servants and chauffeur for the writer Tristan Tzara and his wife, the painter Greta Knutson.  Buildings and the built environment reflect our society, and in turn express its social structures. Architecture is equally a… Read More

Alternative Histories: Loeliger Strub Architektur on Emil Hoppe

Alternative Histories: Loeliger Strub Architektur on Emil Hoppe

Alternative Histories: Lilith Ronner van Hooijdonk on Edward Blore

Alternative Histories: Lilith Ronner van Hooijdonk on Edward Blore

It is the lightness which attracts attention. The simple elegance of the wooden sticks bound together by ropes. Or are they flexible twigs? Yet the lightness is the effect of force. The tangible tension in the moment where two of the thinnest branches remain in place through both bending towards… Read More

Alternative Histories: ECTV on Tony Fretton

Alternative Histories: ECTV on Tony Fretton

We are very happy with this new commission. Thinking of a third phase for the London Lisson gallery is an honorable and challenging design assignment! Without false modesty, we must recognize that a Belgian architect is particularly well-placed for this task. After all, Belgians are very skilled in row-house configurations… Read More

Alternative Histories: Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter on Peter Märkli

Alternative Histories: Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter on Peter Märkli

Johansen Skovsted were asked to imagine an alternative future for a historical architectural drawing, presented in the form of a model. Johansen Skovsted were assigned the drawing ‘Untitled 1226’ (1980-1999) by Peter Märkli.  The result is a model which furthers ideas suggested in the drawing. Its proportions and dimensions are… Read More

Alternative Histories: David Kohn Architects on John Hejduk

Alternative Histories: David Kohn Architects on John Hejduk

You enter stage right, walking along a raised path with a lake extending upstage and a six metre high wall placed centrally that will conceal your progress from the audience. Downstage a cast of building bodies are pressed against the wall. The drawing is an enigma, suggesting multiple possible encounters… Read More

Alternative Histories: Eagles of Architecture on Adolfo Natalini

Alternative Histories: Eagles of Architecture on Adolfo Natalini

Hope as an attitude.Hope in the merging of two conflictual realities.Hope when considering the multiplicity of realms around which the encounter revolves. The paradigm which lays at the heart of the SUPERSTUDIO sketch raises a series of urgencies, doubts, eventualities.The model aims at intensifying these. In the model, a shift… Read More