Tag: landscape

Just Begin

Just Begin

Stan Allen

‘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

A Glasgow Effect

A Glasgow Effect

Paul Stallan

I draw and make dens to counter the weather of Scotland and the urban dislocation that I experienced from growing up in Glasgow, a city that suffered disproportionately from devastating post-war planning policy and the imposition of industrial modern architecture. The consequences of this are described by the medical term… Read More

The story of the pool

The story of the pool

Rem Koolhaas

In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of ‘Manhattanism’ is set free from its origins in the form of five architectural projects: The City of the Captive Globe, Hotel Sphinx, New Welfare Island, the Welfare Palace Hotel and the Floating Pool. Four of these… Read More

Walpole on Kent

Walpole on Kent

Horace Walpole

Here is Walpole’s famous one-liner, but with the remainder of his text on William Kent quoted in full; this is as Pevsner, in his unpublished Visual Planning and the Picturesque, apparently intended it to be. He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden. He felt the… Read More

Web of Intrigue

Web of Intrigue

Michael Webb

Searching the internet for the drawings of Michael Sorkin, one comes across a lengthy list of the projects that have emerged from his eponymously titled studio. Halfway down the list can be found an exotic beauty of a drawing soberly captioned thus: House of the Future. 1999. Coloured Pencil, Hand… Read More

Imaginal Cloud Spaces

Imaginal Cloud Spaces

Sayan Skandarajah

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

With Superstudio in Yesterday’s Tomorrow

With Superstudio in Yesterday’s Tomorrow

Eszter Steierhoffer

‘Metamorphoses become frequent when a culture does not have sufficient courage to commit suicide (to eliminate itself) and has no clear alternatives to offer either‘ – Adolfo Natalini Following social and economic upheaval, there is often a retreat to the home. Traditionally, the ‘home’ is identified with a site of… Read More

Yacht Club Path

Yacht Club Path

Alberto Ponis

I The drawings have different stories. They don’t have a linear story, a beginning date and then a finished date at the end. Sometimes they are drawn in the beginning before the project is built and then continue during the construction of the project and sometimes too – actually, quite often… Read More

Eurolandschaft Dérive

Eurolandschaft Dérive

Peter Wilson

The format is Japanese: a concertina sketchbook presented empty to me by Akira Suzuki shortly after the 1983 completion of our Tokyo Suzuki House design. The drawing format is also Japanese – influenced by our reading of Tokyo (documented in Western Objects + Eastern Fields, AA 1989). Tokyo is difficult for… Read More

Shatwell DrawingScape

Shatwell DrawingScape

Ana Araujo

This year a group of 12 students from the Intermediate School at the Architectural Association, London, are developing proposals for the Shatwell site. They take inspiration from the Drawing Matter collection to create exhibition spaces to display and celebrate the culture of drawing. The work ranges from speculative interpretations of… Read More

Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson

The seven Clandeboye drawings, each 35 × 35 cm and on A2 trace, were produced in 1984. The year is significant. Then the AA was busy maintaining a posture of indifference to Jenksian postmodernism, while the possibly visionary (at least in the case of architectural speculation) and certainly introspective 1970s… Read More

Sam Jacob: Blind Spots

Sam Jacob: Blind Spots

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Peter Smithson: Obelisk

Peter Smithson: Obelisk

Peter Smithson’s influence predates slightly that of Cedric Price. It has also migrated to Shatwell, most notably in the recent re-erection of his wooden obelisk that first stood at Hadspen, commanding the view across the countryside. At Shatwell the obelisk takes on a more urban role (the design was originally… Read More

Cedric Price: FIR Project

Cedric Price: FIR Project

Tim Abrahams observed in his AR article, Shatwell Farm: Reshaping the Rural: ‘Looking into the background of the Shatwell project it is evident that one of Hobhouse’s most important relationships was with the late Cedric Price who, among other things, helped him find the intellectual and architectural grounding to imagine a… Read More

Stephen Taylor: Urban Rural

Stephen Taylor: Urban Rural

The existing enclave of Shatwell Farm has seen a slow decline in its agricultural industry over recent decades, rendering many of its buildings derelict and redundant. The project is seen as part of a process to revitalise the farmstead at Shatwell. Whilst dairy farming is expected to continue and its… Read More

James Wines: Ghost Parking Lot

James Wines: Ghost Parking Lot

Christina Gray

This drawing depicts a site-specific public art project, commissioned by the retail developer David Burmant, which entombed twenty junked cars under a layer of asphalt in a suburban shopping plaza. James Wines was interested in upending expectations about common iconographic elements of suburbia by inverting the relationship between such objects… Read More

Carlos Diniz: Weyerhaeuser Project

Carlos Diniz: Weyerhaeuser Project

Tim Abrahams

This remarkable drawing is a rendering by Carlos Diniz of the headquarters for the timber company Weyerhaeuser in Washington State from 1969, which he drew for the architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The completed building is stunning, of course: the concept of office design known as bürolandschaft, extended out into… Read More

VIOLLET-LE-DUC: Mont Blanc

VIOLLET-LE-DUC: Mont Blanc

Martin Bressani

Charles Barry: Travel Sketching

Charles Barry: Travel Sketching

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Five Obelisks

Five Obelisks

Hans Hollein: Infinite Space

Hans Hollein: Infinite Space

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Becoming One with the Landscape

Becoming One with the Landscape

The architect’s guiding idea has been to create a building which would ‘literally tend to disappear – becoming one with the landscape’ … The dramatic architectural concept and primarily coniferous flora of the landscape were especially compatible to a crisp execution in ink line.

A Lung for the City

A Lung for the City

Cedric Price

A lung for the city. A 24-hour workshop where all can extend their knowledge and delight in learning. From its start and throughout its construction and development, all must be welcomed to observe its continuous growth and change. No area should be hidden and no hour inappropriate. The opportunity to… Read More

The Open Hand

The Open Hand

Le Corbusier

The Open Hand will affirm that the second era of the machine-civilisation, the era of harmony, has started.