Tag: housing
Malagueira: Conflict Resolution (1983)
04.01.2021
Malagueira: Conflict Resolution (1983)04.01.2021
From my experience at Évora, I believe that participation – neither mystifying nor mystified – implies numerous and inevitable conflicts, conflicts which come out of the project. The general concept for the Malagueira district, the methods, the project itself, have indeed given rise to contradictory commentaries, even before our intervention:… Read More
Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan
03.12.2020
Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan03.12.2020
There is a ramp;There is a staggering of volumes in plan and section, in out, in out;There is a tapering toward the top;The emphasis is on the public ambulatory spaces;There are people ambulating about;The proportion and judgement of the volumes appear to be empathetic to people;The undercroft condition is important… Read More
Collection of Sections
02.12.2020
Collection of Sections02.12.2020
The following drawings and commentaries have been excerpted from Visual Discoveries: A Collection of Sections (Oro Editions, 2020). The publication surveys the use of section drawings in the histories of architecture and other professions, from the 17th century to the present. More information on the book can be found here.… Read More
William Heath Robinson ‘Tightening the Green Belt’
26.11.2020
William Heath Robinson ‘Tightening the Green Belt’26.11.2020
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
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’
23.07.2020
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’23.07.2020
The unbuilt half-dome (referred to by the architect as the ‘cupula’) at the Quinta da Malagueira is the subject of a protracted design process that has lasted for over four decades. At the start of 2020, Álvaro Siza sent a drawing of the half-dome to Drawing Matter accompanied by letter… Read More
Informal Housing in Fars (Iran) and Kuwait, 1974
05.04.2019
Informal Housing in Fars (Iran) and Kuwait, 197405.04.2019
This is another world – Yazd, a desert town really. It is troglodytic – a response to a hot, dry climate, so it is cut into the ground using mud brick, the wind catchers and domes create the silhouettes. So these pages are about the visit to Yazd – getting… 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
Eric Parry: Iran, 1974
10.02.2019
Eric Parry: Iran, 197410.02.2019
If I now open the page – this sketchbook is different to rest because at that time, one had time. There was no planning to any of these. No A to Z or intention of a grand plan. For the months involved there is not much evidence, only a hint… Read More
Commonplace
12.11.2018
Commonplace12.11.2018
In 1877, London’s Building News reprinted – as the ‘work of two eminent architects, though it cannot be said to be their joint production’ – an elevation, plan, and partial section published by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a model town house, noting that this supposed ‘London Residence’ had been adapted – with due… Read More
Netherfield Scroll Two
28.08.2018
Netherfield Scroll Two28.08.2018
What follows here forms the second part of a two-part conversation. It has been extracted from the original email exchange between Chris Cross, Jeremy Dixon, Michael Gold and Edward Jones in relation to the acquisition of the Netherfield Scroll, published in part one. The Netherfield Scroll – which measures 20… Read More
Grunt Group: Unrolling the Netherfield Scroll
28.08.2018
Grunt Group: Unrolling the Netherfield Scroll28.08.2018
On 7 April 2018, former members of the Grunt Group – Chris Cross, Jeremy Dixon, Michael Gold and Edward Jones – presented their Netherfield Scroll to Drawing Matter. The 20-foot-long drawing was created c. 1971 for a low-density, social housing estate in Milton Keynes. The following video is a brief… Read More
Netherfield Scroll One
28.08.2018
Netherfield Scroll One28.08.2018
– Chris Cross, Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones
The following two-part conversation surrounds the acquisition of the Netherfield Scroll – a 20-foot-long drawing created c. 1971 by Chris Cross, Jeremy Dixon, Michael Gold and Edward Jones, otherwise known as the ‘Grunt Group’, for the commission of a low-density housing estate in Milton Keynes. The conversation with Jeremy Dixon… Read More
Behind the Lines 4
28.03.2018
Behind the Lines 428.03.2018
Isabella Puddefoot settled herself on the sofa, picked up her embroidery, and after enquiring about his day at the bank, remarked to her husband Samuel: ‘I do declare I am quite spent; running up and down stairs all day is very trying to my constitution. It is eight flights from dealing… Read More
A Blueprint is… Blue
24.01.2018
A Blueprint is… Blue24.01.2018
A common error in looking at architectural drawings is to mistake mechanical reproductions for originals. Original and copy drawings both physically consist of two elements: the material (like ink) and the support (usually paper). But – and it may seem obvious to say – lines on paper are made by… Read More
E. S. Prior’s Architectural Modelling
02.08.2017
E. S. Prior’s Architectural Modelling02.08.2017
The very fact that The Builder should publish an article explaining the benefits, the uses and the methods of making architectural models indicates just how novel the concept was in 1895, even in theory. ‘Architecture Modelling’ was the result of the almost unprecedented display of an actual model at the Royal Academy… Read More
The Town: The Dream of Unity in the 1960s
21.03.2017
The Town: The Dream of Unity in the 1960s21.03.2017
Staying on the theme of images and theoretical propositions from the sixties, the environment of the architectonic avant-gardes was that of the groups thought radical – they were Italian, Austrian, British and American (Archizoom, Superstudio, Archigram and others) and were known for their innovative graphic design and spectacular photomontages which… Read More
Jessie Brennan
04.01.2017
Jessie Brennan04.01.2017
An image These drawings are an act of imagination. Like stills from the filmed footage of a detonation, in each frame a building slumps further down the viewfinder: present, going, going… gone. Or so it seems. On closer inspection, it emerges that the building is still there. It is in… Read More
Gowan: A Rather Beautiful Coherence
12.12.2016
Gowan: A Rather Beautiful Coherence12.12.2016
James Gowan’s Section through house with mechanical services is a presentation drawing made as part of his scheme for ninety-eight council dwellings in East Hanningfield, Essex, completed in 1978. What we might call the ‘image’ of the East Hanningfield scheme is given by the large round windows which mark the façades… Read More
Brunswick Centre
05.12.2016
Brunswick Centre05.12.2016
It is a truism that aggressive building contractors treat architectural drawings with contempt; McAlpine’s were no exception and it being my temporary responsibility in 1969 to negotiate a procedure of actually constructing the visible fair faced in-situ concrete of this vast structure, I arrived at The Brunswick’s site office ready for a… Read More
Drawing Walmer Yard
04.10.2016
Drawing Walmer Yard04.10.2016
The following text is excerpted from the exhibition essay in Drawing Walmer Yard. Piano Nobile, Publications No. XLII 2016. ©Piano Nobile and Peter Salter. Walmer Yard consists of four houses designed by Peter Salter and developed by Crispin Kelly, London W11. … The plan becomes the major generator of form. Geometry, reciprocal… Read More
Cedric Price: Bathat
08.08.2016
Cedric Price: Bathat08.08.2016
Swiftly drawn in soft orange-red crayon, four upright fingers sit astride a flying platform. We instantly recognise the volume and mass of Battersea Power Station; but the weight has vanished with the walls. The uplift is palpable: thin red pen lines inscribe the geometry of the stripped back steels, but… Read More
Hans Hollein: Infinite Space
04.03.2016
Hans Hollein: Infinite Space04.03.2016
Between 1959 and 1964, the sculptor and designer Walter Pichler (1936–2012) and the architect Hans Hollein (1934–2014), working in dialogue, introduced a radically adventurous new plasticity to form, questioning the functional idea of architecture as shelter and its symbolic role as monument, as well as calling for the architect to… Read More
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield
26.03.2021
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield26.03.2021
– Paul Notley
The Site Plan was one of the Planning drawings prepared for submission to Chelmsford District Council and Essex County Council. It is A1 size and drawn on Wiggins Teape 112 gram ‘Gateway’ tracing paper. The East Hanningfield job was the first on which ‘A’ sized paper had been used in… Read More
DMC plan housing autographicals (editorial project)