Writer: Stan Allen
Just Begin: The Convent Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette
28 July 2020
Just Begin: The Convent Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette28 July 2020
By Stan Allen and José Oubrerie
‘The first line on paper,’ Louis Kahn once said, ‘is already a measure of what cannot be expressed fully.’ This captures perfectly the anxiety of beginnings: not what is to be expressed, but everything that will be left out, and an inevitable sense of loss over all the unexplored possibilities.… Read More
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero
23 September 2019
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero23 September 2019
By Stan Allen
Sometime in 1981, while I was working on my final thesis project at the Cooper Union, John Hejduk set me a drawing exercise. We had been discussing the spatial implications of the 90-degree axonometric. [1] Hejduk had a very particular understanding of this drawing type, which involved folding or hinging… Read More
Drawing with Rafael Moneo, Madrid 1984
14 March 2019
Drawing with Rafael Moneo, Madrid 198414 March 2019
By Stan Allen
I arrived in Rafael Moneo’s Madrid office in early 1984. I had graduated from Cooper Union two years earlier and spent 18 months working for Richard Meier in New York. I met Moneo in 1978 when he was teaching at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, but I don’t… Read More
Drawings’ Conclusions
8 February 2018
Drawings’ Conclusions8 February 2018
By Stan Allen
The Campo Marzio project had its origins in a series of drawings done as far back as 1979, when I was a student at Cooper Union. I entered Cooper as a transfer student with a BA already in hand. I was originally placed in second year, but after a semester… Read More
Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric
17 November 2020
Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric17 November 2020
By Stan Allen
One way to think about an axonometric drawing is as a perspective with the vanishing point at infinity. This means that the lines of projection are parallel, which assures dimensional consistency. Early treatises, for example, spoke of parallel projection as analogous to shadows cast by the sun; not, strictly speaking,… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric)