Writer: Helen Thomas
Jesús Vassallo’s Epics in the Everyday (2019): Review & Excerpt
14 June 2021
Jesús Vassallo’s Epics in the Everyday (2019): Review & Excerpt14 June 2021
By Helen Thomas
Review The compelling question of reality, or rather its representation as realism presented as an aesthetic category, acts as the organising principle of this interesting book. This is an investigation of the relationship between photography, architecture and the problem of realism, as its subtitle explains. Its author, Jesús Vassallo, immediately… Read More
Yasmeen Lari: Drawn Closer
7 April 2020
Yasmeen Lari: Drawn Closer7 April 2020
By Helen Thomas
In 2005, earthquakes in northern Pakistan killed 80,000 people. This was an eye-opener for me, and I was drawn to work with these remote, impoverished mountain communities, to help to rebuild their lives. Having retired from conventional architectural practice, and this was something I’d never done before. Unlike NGOs offering… Read More
Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Sphere
9 October 2018
Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Sphere9 October 2018
By Helen Thomas
Frail and delicate, Richard Buckminster Fuller’s drawing of a geodesic sphere floats, without context, in the space of the paper it inhabits. More than the form it reveals, the net of thin, red lines expresses the presence of the space within it. A perspective effect emanates from the central point… Read More
Hugh Ferriss
4 October 2018
Hugh Ferriss4 October 2018
By Helen Thomas
In 1916 a series of laws came into force in the city of New York called the Zoning Ordinance, the first of its kind in America, which regulated building use, area and height of new buildings.
The facade is the window to the soul of architecture: Venice Architecture Biennale, 2018
1 August 2018
The facade is the window to the soul of architecture: Venice Architecture Biennale, 20181 August 2018
By Adam Caruso and Helen Thomas
In response to the Biennale’s theme of Freespace, Caruso St John Architects put together an exhibition that celebrates the historical richness and social generosity of the façade. Whether a building is public or private, whatever its intended use, its façades have the responsibility to make a positive contribution to the public… Read More
Freestanding: Sigurd Lewerentz
20 June 2018
Freestanding: Sigurd Lewerentz20 June 2018
By Helen Thomas
Inhabiting and transforming the lozenge-like space of a long room in the heart of the Central Pavilion’s labyrinth, an installation by Petra Gipp creates a series of veiled rooms, corners and framed views, making spaces both ordered and complex. Everything is luminous. Light drops drops down from the skylights opened… Read More
Architectural Ethnography: Japan Pavilion
12 June 2018
Architectural Ethnography: Japan Pavilion12 June 2018
By Helen Thomas
Flooded with light cast across alluringly animated walls, the Japan Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Biennale in Venice is lined with drawings gathered together under the name of Architectural Ethnography. Momoyo Kaijima of Atelier Bow Wow has been developing the thinking underlying this method of observing and recording the human environment since the… Read More
San Rocco
20 June 2017
San Rocco20 June 2017
By Helen Thomas
This beautiful and black glossy image lies on top of the contrasting ground of a thick, white and matt-surfaced magazine binding. The substance of the drawing is not composed of lines but rather made of solid fields that recoil from each other, very neatly, to leave spaces. These slivers where… Read More
Aitchison / Prendergast
30 December 2016
Aitchison / Prendergast30 December 2016
By Helen Thomas
This finely detailed watercolour drawing is a perfect miniature representation by George Aitchison of his proposal for the composition of a wall in the morning room of Lord Leconfield’s house in Chesterfield Gardens, London, 1881. The figures that define the room – the door and its frame, the fireplace and… Read More
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): REVIEW & EXCERPTS
30 March 2021
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): REVIEW & EXCERPTS30 March 2021
By Helen Thomas
Review Making a book about making a building creates a special narrative challenge in the constant battle between reality and myth that vibrates through non-fiction publications and the ways in which we as readers engage with and interpret them. This is complicated even more when making a book about a… Read More
topographic/cartographic record theatre