Tag: urban form
Trees Push Back
3 November 2020
Trees Push Back3 November 2020
The following text is the third of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More
Startha Éagsula: Elizabeth Hatz on Frank Lloyd Wright
29 October 2020
Startha Éagsula: Elizabeth Hatz on Frank Lloyd Wright29 October 2020
a vanished gardenthe oriental plan eclipses an obsession with circlesall spaces on their way to evaporateany momentthe terrible weight of void implodes into a dome turned sidewayson its way down, breast-feeding earthmidway of life – garden of deathlight words lift like invisible balloonsthe perspective of cantilevered canopies is relentlessin heavy… Read More
A New Administration Center For Los Angeles (1936)
27 October 2020
A New Administration Center For Los Angeles (1936)27 October 2020
Excerpted from ‘Architect and Engineer’ 1936 January by William Hamilton.
The Empire State Building: Elevators (1931)
13 October 2020
The Empire State Building: Elevators (1931)13 October 2020
The following was first published as ‘The Empire State Building: Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, Architects: VIII. Elevators’, Architectural Forum (January 1931). Drawing Matter would like to thank Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this text. Digital copies of Architectural Forum’s series on the Empire State Building can be found at usmodernist.org.
Superstudio: Monument Interrupted
31 August 2020
Superstudio: Monument Interrupted31 August 2020
The collages of Superstudio’s ‘Continuous Monument’ have always seemed to me like stills from an unseen film, each image framing a part of a wider scenography. Combining the collages does not make the larger reality of the monument any less elusive or fragmentary, akin to the way that remembered dreams… Read More
The wobbly line: Asplund, Johansson and the influence of Tessenow in Sweden 1915–1925
27 July 2020
The wobbly line: Asplund, Johansson and the influence of Tessenow in Sweden 1915–192527 July 2020
There is a drawing in a 1923 issue of the Swedish trade journal Byggmästaren (The Master-Builder). It is part of a presentation of a new three-storey house by the architect Cyrillus Johansson. To illustrate his text the architect has included photos and a drawing of the front elevation and a plan of… Read More
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’
23 July 2020
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’23 July 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
OMA in Scheveningen
22 July 2020
OMA in Scheveningen22 July 2020
Scheveningen is a reef on which different architectonic and urban visions have run ashore. – Rem Koolhaas [1] What a surprise to see this 40 year old drawing! I made it as a young collaborator of OMA in Rotterdam in 1982. It is an analytic sketch in ink and color… Read More
A Glasgow Effect
17 July 2020
A Glasgow Effect17 July 2020
I draw and make dens to counter the weather of Scotland and the urban dislocation that I experienced from growing up in Glasgow, a city that suffered disproportionately from devastating post-war planning policy and the imposition of industrial modern architecture. The consequences of this are described by the medical term… Read More
Venice Biennale (1985)
14 July 2020
Venice Biennale (1985)14 July 2020
The third edition of the Venice Biennale in 1985, ‘Progetto Venezia’, directed by Aldo Rossi, had two major themes: the priority given to the moment of planning and the comparison with the Venetian landscape. For the 1985 exhibition, architects were invited to display their designs for the ‘requalification or the… Read More
The Conservative (1941)
6 July 2020
The Conservative (1941)6 July 2020
All along the wide stony high street of Chipping Campden one is aware of stopped clocks. Time has been strenuously and persistently defied – almost successfully. Even the public telephone box – after a short struggle with the Post Office – has been allowed to wear the protective colouring of… Read More
Fresh and Surprised
2 July 2020
Fresh and Surprised2 July 2020
Indische Buurt is a suburban area at the eastern edge of Amsterdam that is rich with diverse ethnicities, building ages and spatial experiences. The streets are named after islands and, as a territory historically built upon reclaimed land, there is an overriding feeling of an archipelago: islands that are places… Read More
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer
11 June 2020
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer11 June 2020
This text was originally published in Architecture through Drawing. Drawn Closer is a year-long collaboration between Domus and Drawing Matter, edited by Sarah Handelman. Each issue of the magazine features one architect discussing a drawing which they recognise as a transformative moment in their work. Domus 2020 is guest-edited by David Chipperfield. I began using… Read More
Welfare Palace Hotel (1978)
4 June 2020
Welfare Palace Hotel (1978)4 June 2020
In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these… Read More
Michael Graves’ Rooftop Village (1985)
1 June 2020
Michael Graves’ Rooftop Village (1985)1 June 2020
excerpted from The Critical Edge: Controversy in Recent American Architecture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985)
New Welfare Island (1978)
27 May 2020
New Welfare Island (1978)27 May 2020
In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these projects are… Read More
Hotel Sphinx (1978)
18 May 2020
Hotel Sphinx (1978)18 May 2020
In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these projects are… Read More
L’Invasion de la Viande (1980)
14 May 2020
L’Invasion de la Viande (1980)14 May 2020
As part of an imagined intervention in the subterranean spaces of the redeveloped Les Halles, Jean Criton’s project describes the new Metro station invaded, in a sinister process of parthenogenesis, by the meat from the Pavillon de la Boucherie, which had stood on the site until its controversial demolition eight… Read More
Animals
5 May 2020
Animals5 May 2020
– James Gowan and Ellis Woodman
excerpted from The Architecture of James Gowan: Modernity and Reinvention (2008)
Drawing on the Nolli Plan
1 May 2020
Drawing on the Nolli Plan1 May 2020
Every January, when John and I visit Rome, I bring a set of A3 photocopies of the Nolli plan (Giambattista Nolli’s Nuova Topografia di Roma, 1748). I don’t bring the whole map – it stretches to twelve sheets, each about A2 in size – so before arriving I am already editing… Read More
Plan with the form of a growling dog
29 April 2020
Plan with the form of a growling dog29 April 2020
I was drawing, endlessly it seemed, a hotel for a competition in Switzerland – fruitlessly as it turned out. I cheered myself along by seeing in the plan the face of an animal, a friendly bear, or more likely a dog. James’ ‘building with the form of a howling dog,’ which he… Read More
Tree Speech
7 November 2020
Tree Speech7 November 2020
– Sylvia Lavin
The following text is the fourth of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More
DMC competition landscape urban form nature