Writer: James Gowan

Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House

Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House

James Gowan, J. M. Richards, Laurent Stalder, James Stirling and Ellis Woodman

This first impetus for this article was provided by Laurent Stalder’s discussion of the sectional perspective drawing for the Isle of Wight house, reproduced here, which led us to J. M. Richards’ seminal essay, and then onward through the literature. In addition, we asked the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Canadian… Read More

Leicester Engineering Building: Completed!

Leicester Engineering Building: Completed!

James Gowan

In this pendant piece to Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction, follow James Gowan, once again, as the photographer of his own architecture. The text below is transcribed from an annotated typescript titled ‘Aspects of Humanism’, July 1989, archived at Drawing Matter. The text was published in Architecture Today as ‘Anatomy… Read More

Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction

Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction

James Gowan

Follow James Gowan, through his own photographs, as he inspects the construction progress of the Leicester Engineering Building. While these photographs may have been taken for immediate use at the time, they now serve as a permanent record of the temporary and internal structures that were later disassembled or concealed.… Read More

Animals

Animals

James Gowan and Ellis Woodman

excerpted from The Architecture of James Gowan: Modernity and Reinvention (2008)

Gowan on the English House

Gowan on the English House

James Gowan

When asked to write for Zodiac about his villa at Chester, built in 1982 for the furniture magnate Chaim Schreiber, James Gowan choses Robert Lorimer and Edwin Lutyens as his references. It is clear that he identifies with Lorimer particularly – another Scotsman, asked to build a house for a good client… Read More

Dismantled Sketchbook

Dismantled Sketchbook

James Gowan

To some extent this is the battleground of the British architectural avant-garde; the incompatibilities of graphics and architecture, the freedom that the former allows and the restrictions that the latter asserts. In recent years, the graphics have got smoother whilst the dialectic has remained largely unresolved. A conclusive project is… Read More