Writer: Neil Bingham
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments
14 November 2024
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments14 November 2024
Instruments of Building in Ancient Rome Vitruvius, writing in the first century BC, portrays being an architect (architectus) in ancient Rome as a daunting task. The knowledge of the architect, he notes, must encompass the understanding of geometry, engineering, optics, history, philosophy, astronomy, and even music and medicine. At a… Read More
Design Drawings Damage Atlas (2023)
15 April 2024
Design Drawings Damage Atlas (2023)15 April 2024
Snap, crackle, pop. Oh, that horrible sound of unravelling a roll of architectural drawings on old dried-up tracing paper from the nineteenth century. Slowly unfurling the brown brittle sheet, it cracks and shatters, little bits drop off in flakes, littering the table and floor like confetti. The experience feels like… Read More
Patrick Gwynne: Colour by Numbers
7 August 2023
Patrick Gwynne: Colour by Numbers7 August 2023
Preferring the sterile white look, most British modernist architects shied away from colour, considering it to be the domain of the interior decorator—the ‘woman’s role’. But Patrick Gwynne (1913–2003) always loved to use colour in his designs, with sensitivity and knowledge. As a budding architect in the mid-1930s, Gwynne purchased… Read More
Alberto Campo Baeza: Sketchbook No. 37
12 May 2018
Alberto Campo Baeza: Sketchbook No. 3712 May 2018
Drawings, personal notes and poems flow across nearly 170 little pages and three months of Alberto Campo Baeza’s life, recorded during 2010 in an architectural sketchbook that he presented to the V&A in 2015. While scripted predominantly in Spanish, much is penned in English in which Campo Baeza is fluent.… Read More
A Blueprint is… Blue
24 January 2018
A Blueprint is… Blue24 January 2018
– Neil Bingham
A common error in looking at architectural drawings is to mistake mechanical reproductions for originals. Original and copy drawings both physically consist of two elements: the material (like ink) and the support (usually paper). But – and it may seem obvious to say – lines on paper are made by… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric) presentation publication housing interior plan DMC section elevation