Tag: drawing instruments

DMJ – Sir John Soane’s Office

DMJ – Sir John Soane’s Office

Helen Dorey

Sir John Soane’s drawing offices at Nos 12 and 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields were the fulcrum of his practice between 1794 and his retirement in 1833. His unique surviving ‘upper’ office was restored in 2022–23. In this article, I will trace the history of the office and recount its use… Read More

DMJ – Brunel’s camera lucida

DMJ – Brunel’s camera lucida

Philip Steadman

In the Drawing Matter collection there is a camera lucida that belonged to Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) (Figs 1–4,6).[1] The camera lucida is an instrument for drawing from life, patented in 1806 by the versatile English chemist and physicist William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828).[2] The term camera lucida (‘well-lit room’) is… Read More

Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine

Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine

Jeremy Peacock

Leaving the Architectural Association and starting at Ahrends Burton and Koralek (ABK) in 1978 was a complete revelation to me. Here, instead of the layers of smudged graphite used to illustrate abstract drawings—as promoted by Dalibor Vesely for instance—graphite powder from your rotary pencil sharpener was used to shade the… Read More

DMJ – Burning Drawing

DMJ – Burning Drawing

Paddi Alice Benson

This article documents a series of material studies of prepared surfaces that use laser cutters as instruments of drawing—and, at times, of weathering. They are part of a study that explores, through texts and images, the role that islands have played as topoi of imagination and experimentation. I begin these island stories… Read More

DMJ – Instruments of Uncertain Occupation

DMJ – Instruments of Uncertain Occupation

Nat Chard

Architecture is a promiscuous practice that touches and learns from many other disciplines. Architects have associated their studies with other specialisations in the sciences, arts and humanities and many of the aspects of architectural education draw upon and defer to those realms. To make architecture one needs to gather ideas… Read More

DMJ – Enzo Mari, Formazione Dinamica di una Sfera Reticolata

DMJ – Enzo Mari, Formazione Dinamica di una Sfera Reticolata

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

Enzo Mari’s Formazione Dinamica di una Sfera Reticolata (Dynamic Formation of a Reticulated Sphere), one of a series of objects produced under the title Relatione tra Contenuto e Contenitore (Relation between Content and Container), was manufactured by the Milanese company Danese between 1959 and 1963. It is a transparent polyester… Read More

DMJ – The Sun as Drawing Machine: Towards the Unification of Projection Systems from Villalpando to Farish

DMJ – The Sun as Drawing Machine: Towards the Unification of Projection Systems from Villalpando to Farish

Francisco Javier Girón Sierra

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Spanish Jesuit Juan Bautista Villalpando spent his last years of life in Rome obsessively working on an interpretation of the Temple of Solomon. When he came to the question of how to represent its plan, he envisioned a new, almost ghostly, way… Read More

DMJ – Template and Talisman

DMJ – Template and Talisman

Laura Harty

For a time, Aldo Van Eyck kept this little amulet in his pocket. An alabaster disc, inlaid with mother of pearl and jet, 30mm in diameter, it is coin-sized, weighted against and warmed by the heat of the body, passing though the fingers. Its uses are both symbolic and instrumental.… Read More

DMJ – Drawing Instruments from Sir John Soane’s Office

DMJ – Drawing Instruments from Sir John Soane’s Office

Sue Palmer

This display of drawing instruments, which can be seen in the newly restored Drawing Office at Sir John Soane’s Museum, rather charmingly evokes the atmosphere of the office when in the early nineteenth century it was the busy epicentre of Soane’s architectural practice, filled with his young apprentices and clerks.[1]… Read More