Tag: public space
The Sacred Games of Art
1 December 2017
The Sacred Games of Art1 December 2017
These images show a series of buildings and public spaces designed over the past decade on Victoria Street, some made intuitively in meetings, others in contemplation, and others as a way to try to communicate something. They also formed part of my PhD submission, and so are sometimes attempts to… Read More
All Change on Change Alley
5 October 2017
All Change on Change Alley5 October 2017
At one o’clock in the morning of 25 March 1748, a fire broke out in Exchange Alley in the heart of the City of London. It started in the powder room of a barber and wig maker and by the time it was extinguished, eighty houses had been destroyed and… Read More
James Wines: Ghost Parking Lot
5 October 2017
James Wines: Ghost Parking Lot5 October 2017
This drawing depicts a site-specific public art project, commissioned by the retail developer David Burmant, which entombed twenty junked cars under a layer of asphalt in a suburban shopping plaza. James Wines was interested in upending expectations about common iconographic elements of suburbia by inverting the relationship between such objects… Read More
Behind the Lines 1
22 September 2017
Behind the Lines 122 September 2017
I look at this drawing and imagine the following scenario: Rex Savidge, architect, is running short of time. He must submit his plan for a commercial development in Newcastle the following day. Giving it a last look over, he is generally pleased with it: he has taken particular care with the… Read More
Concrete Beach
13 August 2017
Concrete Beach13 August 2017
This drawing was made with a chinagraph pen over the course of a holiday afternoon. It started out roughly, as a quick sketch, but time stretched out as more people filled the page. I like using chinagraph as it can be sensitive to great softness and also very dark lines. I like its texture – it is a very… Read More
Dissecting
25 July 2017
Dissecting25 July 2017
Programme Notes: Drawing Matter, Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, Kingston School of Art Summer School. The impossible whole It might be best to start this Summer School with a big question – what is the value of architecture? One way to think about such a general question might be to… Read More
Two ideas of the House
9 May 2017
Two ideas of the House9 May 2017
This is probably my first collage with such a serious intent. It came about while I was working with Robin Evans at the Architectural Association. I made it during the second term of our collaboration running Unit 4 in the Diploma School. We had set out to determine a possible… Read More
Witherford Watson Mann: Waiting Women
31 January 2017
Witherford Watson Mann: Waiting Women31 January 2017
‘What’s it like?’: the experience of being there in a building is fundamental. That’s why we draw a lot in perspective (mostly eyeballed rather than constructed), because it offers the closest approximation to being there. But… moving through an urban environment formed by many buildings, reading signs, interpreting other people’s… Read More
A Civic Utopia Exhibition
8 October 2016
A Civic Utopia Exhibition8 October 2016
A Civic Utopia: Architecture and the City in France 1765-1837 was curated by Nicholas Olsberg and Basile Baudez, and organised by Drawing Matter Trust in collaboration with The Courtauld Gallery as part of Somerset House’s celebration of the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia. The exhibition considered the place of architecture… Read More
The Birth of the Column
7 April 2016
The Birth of the Column7 April 2016
The following text is excepted from an interview with Kate Goodwin, in: Sensing Spaces, Architecture Reimagined, Royal Academy of Arts, 2014. All drawings are by Álvaro Siza, 2013–2014, for the design, placement and installation of three columns in precast yellow concrete, first in the courtyard of Burlington House and then in… Read More
Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building
18 March 2016
Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building18 March 2016
The Kansas City Office Building – never built but designed in many variations between 1966 and Louis Kahn’s death in 1974, in close collaboration with the structural engineer August Komendant – is a clear example of the poetics of weight and mass in contrast with prevailing ideals of structural lightness.… Read More
Michael Webb: Sin Centre
5 December 2015
Michael Webb: Sin Centre5 December 2015
The first thing you will notice about the Sin Centre, or Entertainments Centre as it was initially called, is that it lacks entertainments. Pour over the plans, but you will find no drawing lines suggesting the presence of a bowling alley or a restaurant or even a theatre. I forgot… Read More
View the action, neck or talk (1965)
4 December 2015
View the action, neck or talk (1965)4 December 2015
All this can, and is meant to happen on the parking ramps of the Sin Centre: couples bring along their own mobile living room and view the action, neck or talk.
A Lung for the City (1984)
27 November 2015
A Lung for the City (1984)27 November 2015
The following has been excerpted from Cedric Price, 1984. A lung for the city. A 24-hour workshop where all can extend their knowledge and delight in learning. From its start and throughout its construction and development, all must be welcomed to observe its continuous growth and change. No area should be… Read More
The Open Hand (1954)
1 November 2015
The Open Hand (1954)1 November 2015
The Open Hand will affirm that the second era of the machine-civilisation, the era of harmony, has started. -Le Corbusier
Zünd-Up: ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system
23 October 2015
Zünd-Up: ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system23 October 2015
An element in this Viennese collective’s proposal to extend the city into a newly ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system, this ‘Cortina-Bob-Bahn’ would have ornamented the gardens of the Prater with a drive-yourself roller-coaster tower some 1500 metres high.
Isolation or participation?
11 September 2015
Isolation or participation?11 September 2015
Isolation or participation? The immersions were allusions to two contrary attitudes ever present in the deportment of so many in this era: a readiness to join the currents of social change or a determination to isolate oneself, waiting for what might be next.
New Babylon (1963)
3 September 2015
New Babylon (1963)3 September 2015
– Constant
The following is excerpted from Constant’s New Bablyon, 1963, and translated by Kenny Stevens. Books full of words, oral, printed traditions fixed the cities as a law of life for generations – conquered and vanquished before and re-erected. Buried under a hollowed time, or still an endless and compelling space,… Read More
The changing metropolis 1940s–1980s
29 November 2013
The changing metropolis 1940s–1980s29 November 2013
– Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg
Part III: Monumentalism and motion 1940s –1980s A night rendering, making cinematic use of the dynamics of movement to suggest modernity, appears in the émigré architect Vassilieve’s ideal Manhattan, his animated drawing technique demonstrating how the varied shelves and openings of a setback megablock scheme bring energy and momentum, light… Read More
The changing metropolis 1815–1900
27 November 2013
The changing metropolis 1815–190027 November 2013
– Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg
Part I: Shifting scales and structures The transformation of the modern metropolis is not so much about expanding urban mats and changing topographic patterns as about how architects responded, structure by structure and type by type, to the shifting scales, capacities and ways of working that the city demanded of… Read More
The changing metropolis 1900–1930s
26 November 2013
The changing metropolis 1900–1930s26 November 2013
– Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg
Part II: Unifying the city landscape: 1900–1930s The area of Finsbury in north London became a borough in 1900 and proposals rapidly appeared to replace the terraces of George Dance the Younger’s Finsbury Square and Finsbury Circus with a large volume of continuous office blocks. John Belcher’s proposal seems to… Read More
Future Scenarios, Part III
3 June 2013
Future Scenarios, Part III3 June 2013
– Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg
As much as is needed: Employing the lightest means Few came closer to actually realising the grandest of grand designs imagined than Edwin Lutyens, called upon to realise something close to George Elliot’s Imperial Palace of God in New Delhi, or to avoiding its absorption and demise in the ensuing… Read More
Behind the Lines 3
7 February 2018
Behind the Lines 37 February 2018
– Philippa Lewis
“Lord, Fanny, I had such a very strange encounter this morning. It being a Friday, I was delivering muffins down to that mad Lady Lewson in Cold Bath Square – her maid says she never washes and is most provoking – and as I was walking along the wall by… Read More
elevation civic & municipal public space behind the lines (series) creative writing Extracts: Women Writing Architecture DMC