Tag: theoretical & imaginary
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism
19.10.2022
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism19.10.2022
As my title indicates, this text will focus on John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses project from the mid-1970s, but I want to approach it in the first instance by way of Roland Barthes’s reflections on the ‘Neutral’. This is the topic of the lectures that Barthes delivered at the Collège de France… Read More
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II
17.06.2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II17.06.2022
This is part two of two posts pairing Freddie Phillipsons’s drawings from The Ulysses Project with excerpts from James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, until 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international programme of events celebrating 100 years… Read More
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I
16.06.2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I16.06.2022
This is part one of two posts pairing Freddie Phillipsons’s drawings from The Ulysses Project with excerpts from James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, until 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international programme of events celebrating 100 years… Read More
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction
08.06.2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction08.06.2022
This text introduces The Ulysses Project by architect Freddie Phillipson, his exploration of the relationship between the buildings of Dublin and James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, from 17 June – 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international… Read More
The Evolving Role of Drawing
29.04.2022
The Evolving Role of Drawing29.04.2022
This text was first published in The Architectural Review in 2013. Carlo Scarpa, in a famously infamous gesture, opened all his courses in design at the University of Venice by demonstrating the art of sharpening a pencil. That was the precise point, he claimed, from which all architecture proceeds. And… Read More
The Iterative Power of Architecture’s Absence
07.04.2022
The Iterative Power of Architecture’s Absence07.04.2022
In 1991, the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron prepared a submission with the artist Remy Zaugg for the Berlin Morgen (‘Berlin Tomorrow’) exhibition organised by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. By surrounding Berlin’s Tiergarten with four new buildings, they proposed to restructure the park – then perceived as… Read More
Wood & Harrison: A Film About a City
21.03.2022
Wood & Harrison: A Film About a City21.03.2022
– Paul Harrison and John Wood
We are not architects. I mean, if you insist, we could probably knock something up, but we are not that good at maths, and not really that great with materials. ‘Wood and Harrison – Architects. You’ll be knocked out by our buildings’. But we have always been interested in architecture.… Read More
Entering the Imperial Palace
16.03.2022
Entering the Imperial Palace16.03.2022
‘What a subject for John Martin!’ exclaimed a passer-by, as the hungry flames flickered up York Minster. Maybe they had in mind his apocalyptic painting The Fall of Nineveh, exhibited that same year at the Western Exchange on Old Bond Street and reproduced widely as a mezzotint print. Unbeknown to… Read More
Postmodern Australia: Robert Pearce’s Drawings for Edmond and Corrigan
01.02.2022
Postmodern Australia: Robert Pearce’s Drawings for Edmond and Corrigan01.02.2022
Writing in Cities of Hope (1993), the historian Conrad Hamann relates that, on mentioning to Robert Venturi the name of the Australian postmodernist architect Peter Corrigan, the first words from Venturi’s mouth were ‘Oh God! Corrigan!’. Yet it must be made clear that to Corrigan, and to his wife and… Read More
Charles Jencks: Architect in the Jumping Universe
25.01.2022
Charles Jencks: Architect in the Jumping Universe25.01.2022
Gardens have always been the location to contemplate and speculate on man’s place in nature. Gardens bring the macrocosm into the microcosm by the necessity of being a living place, connecting to the wider rhythms, ecological networks, or the even more abstract forces that create our world. When Charles and… Read More
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum
04.10.2021
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum04.10.2021
There is a handwritten phrase in red ink at the bottom of this sketch, which reads in Italian: ‘for the continuous monument (genesis)’. This drawing is from one of Adolfo Natalini’s sketchbooks and depicts a series of studies about the earth. In the same sketchbook, he drew multiple sequences of… Read More
An Overwhelming Concern with Shelter! (1966)
16.09.2021
An Overwhelming Concern with Shelter! (1966)16.09.2021
The International Dialogue on Experimental Architecture (IDEA) was held at New Metropole Arts Centre in Folkestone, Kent, 10–11 June 1966. The symposium was organised by Archigram and included contributions from Hans Hollein, Joe Weber, Yona Friedman, Cedric Price, Arthur Quarmsby, Anthony G. William and Reyner Banham. The following text is… Read More
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House
25.07.2021
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House25.07.2021
I find myself lost in the woods, then reorientated, guided by the centralised chimney. Standing dead centre in front of the gate lodge, my gaze is lifted to the space between chimney and sky, between foreground or background. A cloud of white smoke disguises itself as an English cloud, passing… Read More
Postcards: The Nature of Images
21.07.2021
Postcards: The Nature of Images21.07.2021
Our vision is simultaneously determined by the (past) historical structure of the work and by the present structure of the gaze that examines it, in which the accumulated glimpses of history often continue to operate.– Daniel Arasse Writing a postcard is the simplest thing in the world. Among other things,… Read More
The James Clarke Remake
20.07.2021
The James Clarke Remake20.07.2021
– Oscar Binder and Nikolaus Podlaha
In 1989 the architect James Clarke was commissioned to propose a design for the new Multimedia Library of Mr. Yamamoto in Tokyo, Japan. Although never built, and only a handful of sketches were ever published in some obscure magazines of the mid 90s, the drawings were highly praised by the… Read More
36 Elevations
12.07.2021
36 Elevations12.07.2021
I began this series of drawings with something else in mind. The first picture was to be drawn freehand, but I took a wrong turn straight away by setting up a structure using a set-square around which the composition would be based. I realised that the structure was already a… Read More
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City
12.05.2021
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City12.05.2021
Hans Hollein’s city structures look awry to someone familiar with his retail work. In the time that these drawings were made, Hollein completed his UC Berkeley degree, travelled across the USA, and did an exhibition with Walter Pichler in Austria. His most influential visit was to the Native American pueblos.… Read More
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing
26.04.2021
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing26.04.2021
How we look at architectural drawings is an inherently complicated topic. The issue arises from what we understand to appear and disappear on the page. The field of architecture has spent little time talking about what we see (and don’t see) on the surface of the drawing itself. One could… Read More
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material
21.04.2021
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material21.04.2021
– Editors
The following quotations are from ‘Mein Stoff für Fassaden (My Facade Material)’, a lecture delivered online by Peter Märkli to open a series of five talks for the Architecture Foundation. The quotations are presented here in a loose fashion, some treated as aphorisms about design, others illustrated with drawings from… Read More
Nancy Holt: Sky Mound
08.04.2021
Nancy Holt: Sky Mound08.04.2021
Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt recalibrated the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. Across five decades she… Read More
Excerpt: Shadow Places
15.03.2021
Excerpt: Shadow Places15.03.2021
The following text is excerpted from Simon Unwin’s book on shadow, in his series Analysing Architecture Notebooks, available here. For 20% off until May 31st 2021, use code KHL20. The piece is illustrated with drawings specially selected by Simon from the Drawing Matter collection. ‘Yea, though I walk through the… Read More
Lauretta Vinciarelli: Homogeneous and Non-Homogeneous Grids
11.03.2021
Lauretta Vinciarelli: Homogeneous and Non-Homogeneous Grids11.03.2021
The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid is loaded with symbolism and history: it is emblematic of origins, order, systems, utopias and dystopias, and the inevitable susceptibility… Read More
Aldo Rossi: Dieses Ist Lange Her/ora Questo e Perduto
09.09.2022
Aldo Rossi: Dieses Ist Lange Her/ora Questo e Perduto09.09.2022
– Jaime Tillería Durango
Looking at This was a long time ago/now this is lost, as well as other drawings in Rossi’s unofficial collection of l’architettura assassinata, brings to mind the image of a feast. The scenes are funereal indeed, but they hold a festive aura, as if a celebration had just taken place… Read More
urban form drawing matter writing prize 2021 theoretical & imaginary