Tag: DMC
Alternative Histories: Office Winhov on Burnham & Co.
09.03.2019
Alternative Histories: Office Winhov on Burnham & Co.09.03.2019
Conversation piece in blue Daniel Hudson Burnham’s buildings are based on a classical order of well-proportioned elements with a strict load-bearing tectonic expression – a familiar architectural language still spoken today. But, as with all languages, this tectonic language gradually transforms as the context in which it is spoken changes. The… Read More
Alternative Histories: Studio Thys Vermeulen on Sergison Bates
09.03.2019
Alternative Histories: Studio Thys Vermeulen on Sergison Bates09.03.2019
Folly The drawing we received was a pencil drawing showing a vertical elevation of Sergison Bates’s Tower House in Nutley. This proposal for a vertical country house, as explained by the architects, refers to the memory of an old water tower that stood on the same spot. Unlike the lightness… Read More
Zaha Hadid: Kurfürstendamm
08.03.2019
Zaha Hadid: Kurfürstendamm08.03.2019
This is all Zaha’s hand. When she is drawing there is a directionality – you are looking from the top, at a plan, extruded or in perspective. These sketches are relatively preliminary but certainly not initial – they are too defined. She is developing a composition, but already thinking about… Read More
Alternative Histories: Rloaluarnad on Mario Sironi
07.03.2019
Alternative Histories: Rloaluarnad on Mario Sironi07.03.2019
The model is a theatre within a city block. A small volkshuis, a fun palace – a public interior with the shed as its inspirator. Meeting wall to wall with its neighbours, the theatre is a black box within the city block; to the rear is a light, interchangeable structure, clad… Read More
Gowan and Stirling
01.03.2019
Gowan and Stirling01.03.2019
This odd-shaped, yellowed analysis drawing by James Gowan, drawn directly onto heavy paper isn’t dated, and was probably added to years after the drawing was nearly complete. Ellis Woodman describes the drawing as ‘that drawing that James always kept in the box with his sketchbooks’. Unusually, when I first saw… Read More
Alternative Histories: Descloux Engelschall on Louis-François Trouard
28.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Descloux Engelschall on Louis-François Trouard28.02.2019
the duplicity becomes entity.the backside becomes frontside.the theatrical becomes ordinary.the disguise becomes a dress.the barracks become dwellings.the chimera becomes concrete.the rock becomes textile.the drapes become stone.the boulder becomes the domino.the domino becomes history.the tent remains. – Descloux Engelschall, 2018
Alternative Histories: Schneider Türtscher on Álvaro Siza
28.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Schneider Türtscher on Álvaro Siza28.02.2019
Accumulation – arranged, adjusted, rearranged and painted / grey cardboard, corrugated cardboard, spruce sticks, pencil, glue, acrylic paint white, acrylic paint red, clear lacquer / 20 x 22.8 x 14.3 cm. – Claudio Schneider, Michaela Türtscher
Alternative Histories: East Architecture on Otto Wagner
28.02.2019
Alternative Histories: East Architecture on Otto Wagner28.02.2019
Otto Wagner’s self-initiated design for the Capuchin Church and Imperial Crypt in Vienna reveals a powerful civic pride and belief in the role of architecture to improve lives. His monument was more than a symbol of mass and space; its claddings and dressings were dramatically intended for social effect. The… Read More
Alternative Histories: Taka Architects on Peter Märkli
28.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Taka Architects on Peter Märkli28.02.2019
Peter Märkli’s sketch of the plan for Haus Kuehnis seems to describe a compact building with a different front and back and interior rooms made specific through spatial divisions, decoration and architectural order. We know Markli’s house – with its stout singular form and enigmatic approach to order and decoration… Read More
Alternative Histories: Ryan W Kennihan Architects on John Nash
24.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Ryan W Kennihan Architects on John Nash24.02.2019
1. The architecture of John Nash (1752-1835) may be said to oscillate between two distinct approaches depending on location. On the one hand, he creates an architecture in the city that is ordered, symmetrical, proportioned and rational (see Park Crescent, Hanover Terrace or the garden front of Buckingham Palace), on… Read More
Alternative Histories: Stephen Bates on Henry Thomas Cadbury-Brown
22.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Stephen Bates on Henry Thomas Cadbury-Brown22.02.2019
Reading Jim Cadbury-Brown’s transcript of ‘Ideas of Disorder’ delivered at the Architectural Association in 1959, it is clear just how far he had moved from his functionalist modern movement origins towards a more expressive and instinctive idea of what architecture could be and mean. The drawing of a first scheme… Read More
Alternative Histories: 31/44 Architects on William Butterfield
22.02.2019
Alternative Histories: 31/44 Architects on William Butterfield22.02.2019
Dear Sir William, Thank you for forwarding your drawing concerning the proposed alterations to Heath Court, Otter-St-Mary. It is indeed an exciting project. We heard rumour that (y)our client is actually the wealthiest family in Britain. We understand that came with a certain expectation of what their home would be… Read More
Alternative Histories: Carmody Groarke on Haus-Rücker-Co
22.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Carmody Groarke on Haus-Rücker-Co22.02.2019
Ashtray Our interest in Haus-Rücker-Co’s drawing lies less in the technological implications that created the artificial environment and focusses instead on the spatial tension created between Mies van der Rohe’s Haus Lange and the heart-shaped bubble that surrounds it. The drawing removes reference to the context, within and outside the… Read More
Boompjes I
22.02.2019
Boompjes I22.02.2019
In the 1980s, the city of Rotterdam asked OMA to study its high-rise building and to illustrate their findings in a planning proposal. The site, selected in consultation with the Rotterdam Planning Department, was situated on Maasboulevard, near the Maasbridge – an angle between the river and the lower city grid, a ‘hinge’… Read More
Roosevelt Island
17.02.2019
Roosevelt Island17.02.2019
The Roosevelt Island competition was sponsored by New York State Urban Development Corporation for the urbanisation of an island in the East River of Manhattan. The city grid served as a formal generator for the building types, adapted with controlling geometry to the proportions of the island’s topography. There are… Read More
Alternative Histories: Conen Sigl Architekten on Giuseppe Chiantarelli
16.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Conen Sigl Architekten on Giuseppe Chiantarelli16.02.2019
Pompeiian Mausoleum for Extinct Animals (Associations about a mural painting of the Casa Pseudourbana in Pompeii) The painted structure on the plaster makes the wall appear as filigree and light – crumbled plaster shows the massive masonry behind, the actual construction of the wall. With a little bit of paint,… Read More
Alternative Histories: Christ & Gantenbein on Louis Kahn
16.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Christ & Gantenbein on Louis Kahn16.02.2019
Louis Kahn’s drawing is a floor plan, a typical plan. It is characterised by the stark expression of the poché. The coal-coloured stains lend the drawing the quality of a painting. Their roughness contrasts with the minuscule dots suggesting the mullions of the facade. It’s a sketch on paper, not on… Read More
Zaha Hadid: Azabu-Juban
16.02.2019
Zaha Hadid: Azabu-Juban16.02.2019
Zaha Hadid’s sketches during mid-1980s for projects often unknown and unbuilt mark a transitional period in her drawing and thinking, from the early work inspired by the programme briefs and axonometric drawing style of OMA. Often she sketches in plan, her line moving right to left, discernable through an initial… Read More
Alternative Histories: Mikael Bergquist on Peter Märkli
14.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Mikael Bergquist on Peter Märkli14.02.2019
Peter Märkli’s drawing of the House in Sargans has an intriguing combination of a rigorous proportional grid and a sketch-like drawing showing the garden elevation of the house. The actual house was designed in 1983 for the architect’s sister. It was built in situ, in cast concrete. The concrete has… Read More
Alternative Histories: De Smet Vermeulen architecten on Bruce Goff
14.02.2019
Alternative Histories: De Smet Vermeulen architecten on Bruce Goff14.02.2019
GOFFTOWN Walls cannot just be surfaces. They are mass. Wouldn’t you agree? Sure! But… this much? Can you afford the space? And why layering them twice? First the bricks, and then the ten-brick blocks It is important that all wall heights are related. The steps must be easy to count.… Read More
Alternative Histories: Marie-José Van Hee on Hans Hollein
14.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Marie-José Van Hee on Hans Hollein14.02.2019
The construction and layering in Hans Hollein’s drawing reminds me of the Aqueduc Romain de Barbegal in France, which I visited some summers ago. This structure can be found in Hollein’s drawing of the city; for me, it represents a landscape, rather than an urban context. The drawing comprises three layers.… Read More
Alternative Histories: Hans van der Heijden on Josef Hoffmann
14.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Hans van der Heijden on Josef Hoffmann14.02.2019
When I received a tiny sketch of a cottage by the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), I found the drawing at the same time intriguing and awkward. Hoffmann’s drawing suggests an expressive roof to the cottage, an attractive theme to me. It is ‘a little house with a big scale’.… Read More
Alternative Histories: Clancy Moore Architects on Joseph Paxton
14.02.2019
Alternative Histories: Clancy Moore Architects on Joseph Paxton14.02.2019
‘Every element of its construction speaks for itself alone.’ So wrote Gottfried Semper of the Caribbean hut he had seen in the Crystal Palace, and which he used to describe the four elements of architecture. Paxton’s patent drawings and text describe a fragment of the roof that sheltered Semper, the… Read More
