Tag: drawing matter writing prize 2020
Thomas Chippendale and Ornament
13 January 2021
Thomas Chippendale and Ornament13 January 2021
‘[Ornament] omitted at pleasure,’ wrote Thomas Chippendale in a guide to his revolutionary The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, the first furniture pattern book of its kind. Although initially considered an advertising tool, it quickly became an invaluable manual for craftsmen, with its clear dimensions and rigorously proportioned pieces open… Read More
The Fun Palace: Light Adaptation
8 January 2021
The Fun Palace: Light Adaptation8 January 2021
Techniques of architectural drawing have been developed according to the physics of light and our perception of its effects. From the origins of two-dimensional representation – often mythologized in the act of tracing a projected silhouette on a flat surface – to practices of atmospheric simulation in rendering, recognized patterns of light have become essential in the communication of architecture’s spatial… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Architectural Apparitions
7 January 2021
Writing Prize 2020: Architectural Apparitions7 January 2021
Some dreams are never meant to see the light of day. Like a wild design that continually finds itself at the bottom of the roster, patiently waiting its turn to be a part of the city’s skyline, it either promises to burn a hole in the pocket of the investor,… Read More
Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints
21 December 2020
Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints21 December 2020
They began to bloom on websites a couple of years or so ago – stretching out on social media, unfurling in the arts sections. Pale alien shapes suspended in deep blue: something like lightning flattened in a flower press; a sleeping creature emerging from a cloud of coral; a spectral… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Pens down, Braid up
17 December 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Pens down, Braid up17 December 2020
Hair, silky, wavy or coiled, somewhere, is felt by us all. It is one of the first things we play with, we shape and mold, unconsciously or artfully. Beginning as a line, slack and tentative, a hair appears as a strike of fine ink. Collected and carefully teased each strand… Read More
Soane’s Temple Stye
16 December 2020
Soane’s Temple Stye16 December 2020
A temple for pigs? for swine? for hogs? Not a temple to worship them in, nor a temple for them to be sacrificed in. A temple for them to live in. These are not the pigs which invented their own form of latin, or those powerful Orwellian pigs, but normal… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: The Anatomy of an Oyster Theatre
14 December 2020
Writing Prize 2020: The Anatomy of an Oyster Theatre14 December 2020
In the beginning, there was only a shell. An empty shell. But we could already sense the contours of its elliptical shape, its multilayered protective envelope, stratified, laminated, like the bark of a tree (a). Slowly, the outer flaps of the carapace would move away from each other, vertically sweeping… Read More
Drawing, Collaging, Rendering
9 December 2020
Drawing, Collaging, Rendering9 December 2020
When the ‘hard-line drawing’ has become so synonymous with the image of the architect it is easy to forget that the convenience of the everyday pen is relatively recent. For most of the long history of the world’s second-oldest profession, pen, paint and ink were reserved for competition boards or… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered
5 December 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered5 December 2020
– Laura Bonell and Daniel López-Dòriga
Around 200 AD, a map of the city of Rome was carved on marble at a scale of approximately 1:240. It measured 18 meters wide by 13 meters high and comprised 150 marble slabs hung on an interior wall of the Templum Pacis. The Forma Urbis Romae or Severan Marble Plan, as… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Smudgy Logic – A Short Story
30 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Smudgy Logic – A Short Story30 November 2020
‘it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them.’– Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation ‘so you compute with smudgy pictures?’– K-32, Universal Fabricator ‘But what does it do?’ insisted Kei in his eerily smooth, synthetic voice. ‘Are you really asking me what my drawing does?’ Miho’s… Read More
William Heath Robinson ‘Tightening the Green Belt’
26 November 2020
William Heath Robinson ‘Tightening the Green Belt’26 November 2020
On 22 March 1921, The Times reported on ‘the urgent need of a green belt being preserved round London.’ It was the first recorded use of the phrase. By the time William Heath Robinson came to makes sketches for ‘Tightening the Green Belt’ (c.1935–47), the urban ring o’ roses was familiar enough… Read More
Outside In
23 November 2020
Outside In23 November 2020
Music plays from behind a curtain. Lights come on and you see that the curtain runs along two sides of a carpet whose centre hosts a leopard skin cushion. There is a chair at one side of the carpet and at the opposite end, a single column. Not before long… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing
13 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing13 November 2020
Similar to many of Rossi’s drawings, the Urban Fragment presents us with a collection of his most cherished forms – a primordial tower, the hand of a saint, and fragments of his own projects, such as the Gallaratese 2 housing complex in Milan and the Cemetery of San Cataldo. In… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant
9 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant9 November 2020
‘Through modesty, restraint, and measured discipline, immeasurable delights are made possible.’ James Corner, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (1996) C. To measure a croissant, we might: 1.1 Evaluate all ingredients involved: flour, sugar, milk, yeast, salt and butter. 1.2 Count the number of folds the butter and dough must… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Hugh Casson’s ‘Diary’
6 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Hugh Casson’s ‘Diary’6 November 2020
Hugh Casson did it in the car. He did in in the Opera House, in Westminster Abbey and at the Buckingham Palace Garden Party. He did it in Goa, Mykonos and at Loughborough University. Wherever he went, whatever he saw, he drew. He drew to keep his eyes keen and… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Held Fast: SITE’s Ghost Parking Lot
3 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Held Fast: SITE’s Ghost Parking Lot3 November 2020
The scene might not appear unusual at first: cars are parked in a row near a commercial building with pedestrians passing on a sidewalk. On closer examination, though, the edges of the finely crosshatched cars appear softer than those of the building and roads. The cars seem to be draped… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: The Best Future
2 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: The Best Future2 November 2020
When James Wines was commissioned to design a series of big-box-retail sheds for ‘Best Products’—a now defunct chain of mail-order catalogue showrooms—it couldn’t have seemed illustrious. A shed’s objective is to enclose maximum space for minimum cost. The only real design element is the front facade, typically topped with a… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Figures of War
29 September 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Figures of War29 September 2020
Niccolò Machiavelli concludes his treatise on the art of war (Dell’Arte della Guerra, 1521) with a series of diagrammatic ‘figures’ illustrating the arrangements of troops known as ordinanze. Rather than using human silhouettes, the ordinanza links alphabetical signs to specific roles and positions of the soldiers, reducing the army to… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Drawing People
23 September 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Drawing People23 September 2020
Representations of people are central to our ability to inhabit drawings, to make sense of them, understand their scale, their atmosphere, their character: to exist in the world that the drawing constructs. These images of people are immediately recognisable by all, but are we all able to recognise ourselves amongst… Read More
The Meaning of Lines
11 January 2021
The Meaning of Lines11 January 2021
– Laura Bonell and Daniel López-Dòriga
A series of seemingly abstract lines occupy the whole space of the paper. Each of them is formed by a thin black line that defines the geometry, accompanied by a thicker, semi-transparent brown line, which highlights it. Written annotations are placed on top, sometimes following the drawing’s wavy shape like… Read More
plan theoretical & imaginary drawing matter writing prize 2020 DMC