Tag: education

Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)

Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)

Ellis Woodman

Filmed in 1964, Ron Parks’ documentary on the newly completed Engineering Department at Leicester catches James Stirling and James Gowan at a moment of professional triumph and personal crisis. Their building was being applauded the world-over – Parks’ film had been commissioned by the American Institute of Architects, to mark its… Read More

Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things

Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things

Paul Clarke

The following text was first published in The Library: Glasgow School of Art (2014), edited by Mark Baines, John Barr and Christopher Platt. The text describes Paul Clarke’s process of surveying Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s library at the Glasgow School of Art, which he undertook in 1993. When the library was… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 7: MOS

Pan Scroll Zoom 7: MOS

Fabrizio Gallanti, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample

This is the seventh in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio interviews Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of the New York-based… Read More

Mother of all drawings

Mother of all drawings

Deepiga Kameswaran

The very first attempts of humans to express their thoughts can be seen in prehistoric cave paintings. From these rudimentary markings to modern-day coding, the human race has evolved to acquire many skills. Still, none of us are born fully equipped with this skillset; we must repeat this process of learning… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 6: Emily Wettstein

Pan Scroll Zoom 6: Emily Wettstein

Fabrizio Gallanti and Emily Wettstein

This is the sixth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio interviews Emily Wettstein, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University GSD. The… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Hugh Casson’s ‘Diary’

Writing Prize 2020: Hugh Casson’s ‘Diary’

Laura Freeman

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

James Gowan: The Sheet for the Job

James Gowan: The Sheet for the Job

Jantje Engels

The elevation of the Engineering Faculty in Leicester, a building by James Stirling and James Gowan, is in the centre of the tracing paper: a drawing composed of vertical, horizontal and diagonal black lines. A series of height lines and dimensions have been applied effectively, showing that the construction is… Read More

Cadbury-Brown: Royal College of Art Extension

Cadbury-Brown: Royal College of Art Extension

Lionel Brett

The counter-reformation did not last long. In the end I think what reconciled us was that everything I attempted failed. By way of diversion from internal dissension, like any politician, I switched to foreign affairs. There were two things which, as an architect, I was expected to achieve for the… Read More

Houses of Work and Play

Houses of Work and Play

Patrick Lynch

The Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto (FAUP), designed by Álvaro Siza, is set on a hillside, close to a road bridge at the mouth of the river Douro. The bridge seems to be part of the extended composition of the campus; the school-city a gateway to the… Read More

Take One: Henry ‘Jim’ Cadbury-Brown and Richard Wentworth on the Royal College of Art

Take One: Henry ‘Jim’ Cadbury-Brown and Richard Wentworth on the Royal College of Art

Take One is a collaboration between Drawing Matter and the Architects’ Lives oral history project run by National Life Stories. Each episode pairs a drawing or visual element with a short audio extract, showing the image alongside the voice of its creator or an informed commentator. The audio extracts are taken from life… Read More

Take One: James Gowan and Sandra Lousada on the Leicester Engineering Building

Take One: James Gowan and Sandra Lousada on the Leicester Engineering Building

Take One is a collaboration between Drawing Matter and the Architects’ Lives oral history project run by National Life Stories. Each episode pairs a drawing or visual element with a short audio extract, showing the image alongside the voice of its creator or an informed commentator. The audio extracts are taken from life… Read More

Seeing, and Disbelieving

Seeing, and Disbelieving

Niall Hobhouse

It is easy enough to say that the analysis of any architectural drawing begins with asking what it is for. But trying to answer this innocent question, which applies equally to the purpose for which the drawing was intended and for which we are now looking at it, presents many… Read More

Gowan and Stirling

Gowan and Stirling

Fred Scott

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

Richard J. Neutra

Richard J. Neutra

Nicholas Olsberg

‘Richard J. Neutra has carried on the Wagner tradition of experimentation in new forms, materials and methods of construction… an impetus to the intelligent solution of new problems.’  Ernestine M. Fantl on the Corona Avenue School, ‘Modern Architecture in California’ (Typescript Mimeograph, MoMA Archives, 1935) Just before 6 o’clock on… Read More

Foster + Partners: CLEVELAND CLINIC HEALTH EDUCATION CAMPUS

Foster + Partners: CLEVELAND CLINIC HEALTH EDUCATION CAMPUS

Norman Foster

Following on from Farshid Moussavi’s curatorial decision to create a display of construction drawings that showcase the ‘full complexity of the different systems and parts of buildings’, I chose this compelling BIM drawing from the Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus project, which suitably illustrates our integrated design approach. Throughout the… Read More

Nicholas Grimshaw

Nicholas Grimshaw

Nicholas Grimshaw

This axonometric of the Arthur Phillip High School illustrates the very inner workings of the building. Stripped bare of its materiality – the steel and concrete frame, the inner and outer facades and interior finishes – to reveal the network of elements which make the building come alive. These vital… Read More

Displaced persons

Displaced persons

Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg

Architects are extraordinarily reluctant to incorporate into their visual descriptions of buildings any evidence that the real subject their structures serve, and around whose activities they are so carefully formulated, is people. Here’s a look at a few of the moments when this unspoken rule has been broken. Distances: Using… Read More