Medium: digital
Pan Scroll Zoom 1
30 July 2020
Pan Scroll Zoom 130 July 2020
This is the first in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of the drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio writes of his own experience as a tutor and… Read More
Just Begin
28 July 2020
Just Begin28 July 2020
‘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
Library of Babel
29 June 2020
Library of Babel29 June 2020
In its most rudimentary form, a LIDAR scan is a simple act of call and response. Thousands of beams of light leave the scanner and receive a measurement based on the distance and intensity (essentially a value of reflectivity) of the objects they collide with. The fascination in these scans… Read More
SUPA Architects: Naked Plans
6 June 2020
SUPA Architects: Naked Plans6 June 2020
– Christian Schweitzer and Ryul Song
This drawing, the first in our ‘Naked Plan’ series, overlaps 107 A3 sheets of construction drawings for House P, a private house in Pyeonchang-dong, Seoul (2013-15). Stripped in Autocad of all information, such as image, text and mtext, line weight, saturation and lightness, only the basic lines remain. Through the… Read More
Calculated Aesthetics
19 May 2020
Calculated Aesthetics19 May 2020
The floor plan of the Losone gymnasium (1990–1997) by Livio Vacchini is a computer drawing made through the repetition of four basic elements: a rectangular black solid, and three types of short lines – one vertical and two diagonals in opposite directions. The black solid is copied with equal distance… Read More
Drawing on the Nolli Plan
1 May 2020
Drawing on the Nolli Plan1 May 2020
Every January, when John and I visit Rome, I bring a set of A3 photocopies of the Nolli plan (Giambattista Nolli’s Nuova Topografia di Roma, 1748). I don’t bring the whole map – it stretches to twelve sheets, each about A2 in size – so before arriving I am already editing… Read More
Scanning Shatwell
30 April 2020
Scanning Shatwell30 April 2020
Every image you see on your screen is known as a raster image. Every image is made up of millions of squares of colour, or pixels. Each file has a particular size, height and width, and within that frame, each pixel has a particular size, colour, intensity and location in… Read More
Allies & Morrison: The Art of Architecture
18 April 2020
Allies & Morrison: The Art of Architecture18 April 2020
Allies and Morrison is an office that has held onto its identity throughout its growth. When I entered the firm, the culture of the office was steeped in a careful, polite and thoughtful style of drawings. The muted drawing style could be observed in the early sketches of the partners… Read More
The San Cataldo Ossuary in the Age of Hyper-Objects
16 April 2020
The San Cataldo Ossuary in the Age of Hyper-Objects16 April 2020
I An abandoned house – a derelict phantom with no roof and no windows – reveals the twofold condition of architecture as image and as form. In San Cataldo, the image and form of death. As image: from afar, a metaphysical de Chirican presence, suspended between Adolf Loos’s project in… Read More
Spaghetti with Meatballs
20 January 2020
Spaghetti with Meatballs20 January 2020
I was born in Berlin in 1943 and came to the US in 1949 when my father got a position at the University of Illinois. I was interested in history, art and mathematics, so I studied architecture there. I interrupted my studies to work in an office in San Francisco… Read More
Imaginal Cloud Spaces
31 December 2019
Imaginal Cloud Spaces31 December 2019
Many hours can be spent on what art historian Mary Berry calls ‘the sheer act of looking’ at the Japanese folding-screen paintings titled Rakuchu Rakugai zu (Scenes in and around Kyoto). [1] Across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such paintings captured a seemingly complete image of the capital city. Through the consistent use of… Read More
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero
23 September 2019
John Hejduk’s Axonometric Degree Zero23 September 2019
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
The façade is the window to the soul of architecture: Venice Architecture Biennale, 2018
1 August 2018
The façade is the window to the soul of architecture: Venice Architecture Biennale, 20181 August 2018
Sorry… this page has not yet been transferred to our new website. Check again soon.
Mark Ericson
30 July 2018
Mark Ericson30 July 2018
This drawing is part of a series that interrogates the orthographic drawing techniques of Guarino Guarini (1624–1683) set out in his posthumous treatise, Architettura civile, (1737). While some of the drawings from the series deal with the direct documentation of his orthographic drawings, this particular drawing translates his written and drawn instructions… Read More
Foster + Partners
26 July 2018
Foster + Partners26 July 2018
Following on from Farshid Moussavi’s curatorial decision to create a display of construction drawings that showcase the ‘full complexity of the different systems and parts of buildings’, I chose this compelling BIM drawing from the Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus project, which suitably illustrates our integrated design approach. Throughout the… Read More
Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
6 July 2018
Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects6 July 2018
Sorry… this page has not yet been transferred to our new website. Check again soon.
Architectural Ethnography: Japan Pavilion
12 June 2018
Architectural Ethnography: Japan Pavilion12 June 2018
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
Elizabeth Hatz: Line, Light, Locus
23 May 2018
Elizabeth Hatz: Line, Light, Locus23 May 2018
This is a Drawing Room, a with-drawing room. It is simply a love-declaration to the architectural drawing. Four walls, three large doorways. One end calmer, the other more open. The first thing decided is a table-bench; the drawing flat on the tabletop – like when you draw it – and… Read More
Elena Manferdini
17 April 2018
Elena Manferdini17 April 2018
The tryptic Ink on Mirror is part of a collection of elevation studies developed over the past three years by my office, Atelier Manferdini. My reason for compiling a suite of digital sketches was rooted in the belief that for the past twenty years computers have been able to produce new geometrical… Read More
Dominique Perrault Architecte
5 April 2018
Dominique Perrault Architecte5 April 2018
Pavilion Dufour, Château de Versailles, Developed Horizontal Wood Blades, Wall Covering began as a working document, resulting from the exchanges and developments between the acoustician, my team and the company engaged to build the acoustical panels covering the walls of the auditorium. This document immediately caught my attention because it seemed… Read More
Nicholas Grimshaw
5 April 2018
Nicholas Grimshaw5 April 2018
This axonometric of the Arthur Phillip High School illustrates the very inner workings of the building. Stripped bare of its materiality – the steel and concrete frame, the inner and outer facades and interior finishes – to reveal the network of elements which make the building come alive. These vital… Read More
WilkinsonEyre
28 March 2018
WilkinsonEyre28 March 2018
This drawing presents a snapshot of the BIM model from the northern end of Battersea Power Station. Combined with a point cloud survey of the existing fabric, it overlays newer elements of construction with layers of the historic model. Careful selection of the information presented makes it possible to see… Read More
Writing prize 2020: Drawing People
23 September 2020
Writing prize 2020: Drawing People23 September 2020
– Daniel Innes
Representations of people are central to our ability to inhabit drawings, to make sense of them, understand their scale, their atmosphere, their character: to exist in the world that the drawing constructs. These images of people are immediately recognisable by all, but are we all able to recognise ourselves amongst… Read More
drawing matter writing prize 2020