Tag: Observed

Swimming in Pixel Fuzz

Swimming in Pixel Fuzz

Will Fu

In 1979, the community of Riehen in Switzerland toured an indoor and outdoor swimming pool proposal by Herzog & de Meuron in the comfort of their private dwellings. Shared as a TV still of a video simulation, the shadowy figures and pliable ceiling surfaces, finished with a grainy wash of… Read More

PostDigital Collage: Naivety as an Ideo-aesthetic Technique

PostDigital Collage: Naivety as an Ideo-aesthetic Technique

Alejandro Carrasco Hidalgo

It was 2005, a moment of crescent belief in technical progress and modernity prior to the upcoming financial crisis that took place two years later. The early 2000s saw the progressive implementation of photorealistic modes of architectural representation through which firms were able to intensify the instrumentalisation of spatial design.… Read More

­­­Constant’s Ladders as Mythic Entity

­­­Constant’s Ladders as Mythic Entity

Alison Bartlett

The ladder, a seemingly unexceptional instrument within the array of futuristic and utopian architectural schemes, sits front and centre; the protagonist of not only this drawing but of Constant’s almost two-decade-long project, spanning 1956–1974, entitled ‘New Babylon’. Propped somewhat haphazardly against a series of horizontally-connected and vertically-angled planes, it exudes… Read More

Careful Crudeness

Careful Crudeness

Karen Olesen

At first glance, this image is a mess. An aerial photograph onto which a pen drawing of an undistinctive, modernist building structure has been mounted. Gouache is smeared in a few places in a seemingly half-hearted attempt to hide parts of the photograph and soften the collision of the two… Read More

Josep Maria Jujol: Ribbons with Streamers Everywhere

Josep Maria Jujol: Ribbons with Streamers Everywhere

Juan Mercadé Brulles, Jesús Esquinas-Dessy and Isabel Zaragoza

During the process of cataloguing drawings from the special collection of Josep Maria Jujol (1879-1949), housed in the graphic archive of the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB UPC), our attention was drawn to a particular drawing, illustrating a festive urban sequence.[1] At first glance, it is a captivating object, simultaneously… Read More