Tag: Vienna School

Protected: The Viennese School at Drawing Matter

Protected: The Viennese School at Drawing Matter

Editors and Iain Boyd Whyte

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Josef Hoffmann: Placeholder Text

Josef Hoffmann: Placeholder Text

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

Designed to match the neoclassical grandeur of Peter Behrens’s Festival Hall, Josef Hoffmann formulates this monumental scheme for the Werkbund’s first exhibition in Cologne. Its facade is dominated by a propylaeum-like entrance, lined with fluted pillars. Above, stepped attics raise the gable fronts upward. The lettering is an appropriately Werkbund… Read More

Drawing, Collaging, Rendering

Drawing, Collaging, Rendering

Cameron Lintott

When the ‘hard-line drawing’ has become so synonymous with the image of the architect it is easy to forget that the convenience of the everyday pen is relatively recent. For most of the long history of the world’s second-oldest profession, pen, paint and ink were reserved for competition boards or… Read More

The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Hamed Khosravi

The essay is an excerpt from Gabriel Guevrekian: The Elusive Modernist, by Hamed Khosravi, published by Hatje Cantz. Pre-order through the publisher’s website or visiting www.guevrekian.org.

Six Architects on their Dream Desks

Six Architects on their Dream Desks

Roz Barr, Biba Dow, Elizabeth Hatz, Emma Letizia Jones, Stephanie Macdonald and Helen Thomas

Drawing Matter recently acquired this design for a table, below. Although the work’s last sale in 1972 attributed the drawing to Thomas Chippendale, we are (perhaps wishfully) hoping that it might be an architect’s own design for desk. The sheet set off a flurry of chatter about the platonic spaces… Read More

Alternative Histories: General Architecture on Emil Hoppe

Alternative Histories: General Architecture on Emil Hoppe

Task We look upon the drawing of Emil Hoppe as a first draft of a building. The draft has travelled through time and it Is now our task to continue the work from our position. Continuation must be understood as something in between mere acceptance and rejection. For this task… Read More

Alternative Histories: East Architecture on Otto Wagner

Alternative Histories: East Architecture on Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner’s self-initiated design for the Capuchin Church and Imperial Crypt in Vienna reveals a powerful civic pride and belief in the role of architecture to improve lives. His monument was more than a symbol of mass and space; its claddings and dressings were dramatically intended for social effect. The… Read More

Alternative Histories: Hans van der Heijden on Josef Hoffmann

Alternative Histories: Hans van der Heijden on Josef Hoffmann

When I received a tiny sketch of a cottage by the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), I found the drawing at the same time intriguing and awkward. Hoffmann’s drawing suggests an expressive roof to the cottage, an attractive theme to me. It is ‘a little house with a big scale’.… Read More

Alternative Histories: Atelier Tomas Dirrix & Boris de Beijer on Otto Schönthal

Alternative Histories: Atelier Tomas Dirrix & Boris de Beijer on Otto Schönthal

A few coloured washes present the frail idea for a cemetery church. The drawing, made by Otto Schontal, hardly seems to make a suggestion for a building. A blue and green blur with coloured stains loosely defines a sphere in which scale nor structure seems important. Following our interest in the… Read More

Parataxis

Parataxis

Matthew Wells

‘Whatever elements that may come to hand or that are selected from the profusion of materials within reach, are combined with words to create a simple poetic image. This should amuse, disturb, mystify or provoke reflection. These images above all should entertain – the only sure road to appreciation.’ Man… Read More

Wagnerschule

Wagnerschule

The drawings of Emil Hoppe (1876 – 1957) and Otto Schönthal (1878–1961) attracted particular interest in the Land Marks exhibition, and people were eager for us to share them more widely. They are presented here with little comment and a few additions for context. These drawings by Emil Hoppe, Otto Schönthal and… Read More

The Changing Metropolis 1900–1930s

The Changing Metropolis 1900–1930s

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