Tag: DMJ 2 – Drawing Instruments/Instrumental Drawings
DMJ – Sir John Soane’s Office
9 September 2024
DMJ – Sir John Soane’s Office9 September 2024
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
1 August 2024
DMJ – Brunel’s camera lucida1 August 2024
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
DMJ – Burning Drawing
6 June 2024
DMJ – Burning Drawing6 June 2024
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
8 May 2024
DMJ – Instruments of Uncertain Occupation8 May 2024
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
10 April 2024
DMJ – Enzo Mari, Formazione Dinamica di una Sfera Reticolata10 April 2024
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
20 March 2024
DMJ – The Sun as Drawing Machine: Towards the Unification of Projection Systems from Villalpando to Farish20 March 2024
– 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
13 March 2024
DMJ – Template and Talisman13 March 2024
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 – Grids and Squared Paper in Renaissance Architecture
14 February 2024
DMJ – Grids and Squared Paper in Renaissance Architecture14 February 2024
The grid and the squared paper have played an important role in architectural practice, both in analysing and measuring what already exists (sites, monuments, etc.) and in organising and modularising the graphic development of the design process. The use of the square grid is generally linked to Greek civilization, mathematics,… Read More
DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras
19 January 2024
DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras19 January 2024
Is distance the raw material of architecture? The early work of Itsuko Hasegawa seems to address this question. In her own words, these projects allowed human beings and architecture to ‘come close and react to each other’, by setting up ‘long distances’. She developed an array of representation techniques through… Read More
DMJ – Canaletto’s Venetian Sketches and the Camera Obscura
13 December 2023
DMJ – Canaletto’s Venetian Sketches and the Camera Obscura13 December 2023
Antonio Canaletto used a camera obscura to make careful sketches of the buildings of Venice. The Gallerie dell’ Accademia has a quaderno, a notebook containing 140 pages of these sketches, which provided the raw material for paintings made in the 1730s, as well as finished drawings that Canaletto offered for sale.… Read More
DMJ – The Stereoautograph
6 December 2023
DMJ – The Stereoautograph6 December 2023
The Zeiss Stereoautograph 1914 Bild II is a mammoth device (Fig.1). It weighs over 400kg and has the same footprint as a Smart Car. When it was retired and donated to the Zeiss Archive in 2004, the Technical University of Hanover had to remove part of its roof in order to lift… Read More
DMJ – Drawing Instruments from Sir John Soane’s Office
25 October 2023
DMJ – Drawing Instruments from Sir John Soane’s Office25 October 2023
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