Archinect - News

Researchers claim to have uncovered world’s oldest architectural plans

2023-05-19T15:30:00-04:00

Engraved between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago, these representations are by far the oldest known to-scale architectural plans recorded in human history, the team reported on Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. They also highlight how carefully planned the desert kites may have been by the ancient peoples who relied on them.

The “desert kites” in question are essentially large-scale slaughter pen-type catchalls used to herd and kill wild animal herds in the prehistoric regions known today as the Levant and Central Asia. Researchers will soon display the plans, which are engraved in stone slabs, in a special exhibition at Jordan’s Al-Hussein Bin Talal University. The paper can be found here.

Co-author Wael Abu-Azizeh told the New York Times the engravings “could also be symbolic commemorations of the desert kites, which may have been an important part of the cultural identity of the ancient peoples who made and used them.”

California passes new copyright protection law for publicly-available architectural drawings

2022-09-21T15:00:00-04:00

California’s state legislature has passed a bill sponsored by the American Institute of Architects California (AIACA) that will limit public access to copyrighted architectural drawings for the first time.

The recently-signed SB 1214 concerns drawings that were submitted to local and state government offices and will take effect on January 1st, 2023. San Francisco-based architect Cary Bernstein is the member who initiated the act and says it will enhance the protections already provided by the Federal Copyright Act that are not properly being upheld by planning processes within the state.

“The law balances California's Ralph M. Brown Act which ensures the public's right ‘to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies’ with long-standing federal copyright laws that protect architectural drawings,” Bernstein said in a statement. “I happen to love law, and this issue allowed me to indulge my interest through a project for [the chapter].”

Drawings, site plans, and ot...

Mark Cuban just donated a trove of World Trade Center drawings to the Cooper Hewitt

2021-09-10T11:56:00-04:00

In 1962, Diniz was hired by architect Minoru Yamasaki as part of the team designing the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. His drawings in the WTC portfolio show viewers the experience of monolithic structures in the context of Lower Manhattan and inside the buildings themselves. The drawings were intended to illustrate Manhattan as a center of international business.

Carlos Diniz' drawings occupy a revered place in architectural history, and his World Trade Center drawings have been by and large kept out of public collections until now. The illustrator was first hired by Minoru Yamasaki in 1962 to give the public a sense of place and scale caused by the architecture that would later become the domineering experience for users of the buildings after they were completed in 1973.

"It strikes an emotional chord with every American," Cuban told Axios. "I wanted the actual drawings to be where any American can see them, and the Smithsonian was the right home."

The Dallas Morning News has more on the billionaire's gift here.

New installation by Sichong Xie opening at the Wende Museum's East German guardhouse

2021-09-08T16:47:00-04:00

The Wende Museum in Culver City, California has announced that a new installation by Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Sichong Xie will open in the museum’s former East German guardhouse this Sunday, September 12.

The guardhouse, which once monitored and controlled access to the state-run East German news agency, Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst, now hosts rotating installations by contemporary artists.

As stated by the museum, Xie’s installation, Memory Structure, Scaffold Series, “features objects and arrangements emblematic of memory and temporality: bamboo scaffolding, embroidery on industrial mesh, and a set of laser-engraved drawings that will fade from continual exposure to light, through which the artist reimagines architectural drawings created by her grandfather in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”

According to the project description, none of her grandfather’s building plans were realized after being exiled to a labor camp by Chinese authorities following the...

Walkable Plans projects 1:1 scale drawings unto floor for immersive design development

2020-07-06T11:20:00-04:00

Walkable Plans is a Pittsburg-based "floor plan projection center" that allows users to project their architectural designs unto the company's facility floor. The 1:1 scale projection enables designers and their clients to review designs at full size, providing a more immersive design experience.

Lost original drawings for Statue of Liberty discovered by map dealer

2020-05-28T11:48:00-04:00

According to Smithsonian Magazine, a recently discovered set of Gustave Eiffel’s original schematic drawings for Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s statue have been found and show the development of his innovative design. California map dealer Barry Lawrence Ruderman purchased a folder of material from Gustave Eiffel's workshop at an auction in 2018 only to find that 22 original engineering drawings of the Stature of Liberty were hidden in the contents. The drawings can be seen on raremaps.com.

Make Architects discusses the importance of the drawing

2019-08-17T12:00:00-04:00

At their best, not only do architectural drawings convey architectural intention, but also something about the meaning of the project and the thinking behind it [...] Not all drawings can be judged in the same way, of course.

Reflecting on the upcoming drawing competition, The Architecture Drawing Prize, Paul Finch of Make Architects shares his thoughts on the importance of the architectural drawing.

Finch writes, "How does one assess the merits of a variety of drawing types? They are related but separate, some an attempt to indicate a whole outcome, while the working drawing explains the process by which individual elements combine at a detailed level. These elements can be combined in certain specialist drawings, often the hallmark of a particular architect."