Tag: DMC
Geoffrey Goes to Basildon
10.10.2019
Geoffrey Goes to Basildon10.10.2019
Charley in New Town is the peerless Halas and Batchelor film made for the government’s Central Office of Information in 1948, offering a utopian vision of new town living to the dazed postwar urban public. There is something of Charley, pedalling around the streets of the immaculately clean, smoke-free, Neo-Garden City,… Read More
Behind the Lines 12
23.09.2019
Behind the Lines 1223.09.2019
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
23.09.2019
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero23.09.2019
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’
23.08.2019
Gio Ponti: ‘Come for Porchetta’23.08.2019
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
10.08.2019
Alternative Histories: Hild und K Architekten on James Gowan10.08.2019
“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: Sam Jacob Studio on Archizoom
31.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Sam Jacob Studio on Archizoom31.07.2019
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
31.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Veldwerk Architecten on Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont31.07.2019
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
30.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Nikolaus Bienefeld on James Gowan30.07.2019
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
30.07.2019
Alternative Histories: NoAarchitecten on Álvaro Siza30.07.2019
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
30.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Noreile Breen on Louis Kahn30.07.2019
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: muf architecture/art on John Hejduk
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: muf architecture/art on John Hejduk29.07.2019
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
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Monadnock on James Stirling29.07.2019
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
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten on Alvar Aalto29.07.2019
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: AMUNT on Adolf Loos
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: AMUNT on Adolf Loos29.07.2019
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: Lilith Ronner van Hooijdonk on Edward Blore
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Lilith Ronner van Hooijdonk on Edward Blore29.07.2019
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
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: ECTV on Tony Fretton29.07.2019
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
29.07.2019
Alternative Histories: Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter on Peter Märkli29.07.2019
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
Gio Ponti: un disegno è un idea
07.10.2019
Gio Ponti: un disegno è un idea07.10.2019
– Niall Hobhouse
Signora Onvoloni, here is a drawing that might find a place in your cabinet of ideas: ‘a drawing is an idea’ – Gio Ponti, translated by Guido Beltramini [1] All seems simple enough on the face of it, and of course one smiles, just as Gio hoped we might. But… Read More
theoretical & imaginary correspondence letters ephemera DMC