Archinect - News

A 12th-century Scottish monk may have invented modern architectural drawing techniques, new research claims

2023-09-22T17:30:00-04:00

Research from a professor at the University of Aberdeen has advanced evidence that the art and practice of architectural drawing may have been invented by a 12th-century Scottish clergyman working in Paris around the time of the construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral and other important Gothic structures.

Dr. Karl Kinsella is a lecturer in Medieval Art History at the institution. His new book, God’s Own Language: Architectural Drawing in the Twelfth Century, presents the idea that a previously unknown monk named Richard the Scot was likely the first person to use the term ‘plan’ for drawings, sections, and elevations he apparently made in order to demonstrate the vantage point of the prophet Ezekiel's visions using then-modern concepts of geometry.

Kinsella says: “This is the earliest evidence we have of a complete visual description of a building including several plans, elevations and sections, but they appear in this strange theological work instead of coming out of building sites...

Morpholio's new in-app feature for Trace, the Smart Hatch, bridges traditional hand drawing with smart technology

2021-03-23T13:24:00-04:00

With advanced versions of digital magic developing every day, architects and designers now are able to connect more fluidly with the global design community. In this paperless, new era we live in, we welcome a recently launched feature in Morpholio's Trace app, the Smart Hatch.

Morpholio has four apps built-in. The popular Trace app with the newest feature plugs the traditional architect profession into today’s digital world with smart hatching, “trace paper” capabilities, and the precision of AutoCAD intelligence.

With the use of an Apple Pencil, the Smart Hatch feature allows enhanced adjustments in the tolerance, shading, and scaling of a pattern, as well as saving into a new hatch library, as compared to AutoCAD. Users can use the Smart Fill feature to hatch in concrete and reinforced steel details, roof shingles and wall panels in elevations, and wood planking in floor plans.

Programming analysis with hatch diagrams is available as well. The ability to calculate the pricing a...

Instagrammer designs and draws a new house every day for a year

2021-02-23T18:43:00-05:00

Last year, New York Architect Andrew Bruno launched One House Per Day, an Instagram page in which the designer has designed and drawn a house every day since the beginning of 2020. The page has attracted over 32,000 followers since its inception.

Beginning this year, Bruno has opened up the page to guest designers who can submit 7 houses. So far the "guest series" is due to feature some prominent young practices including Architensions, Norman Kelley, fall, and Young & Ayata.

Axonometric of the "Homestead" territory within downtown Kansas City. Laser cut woodblock print. Image: Andrew Bruno

Archinect previously featured Andrew Bruno's master's thesis project for the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in An alternative, smart "Homestead" for Kansas City.

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.

FreelandBuck creates a "three-dimensional drawing" installation for the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

2019-11-13T18:54:00-05:00

A new installation created by architects FreelandBuck will be permanently installed in the Museum Lab of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

The installation, titled Overview, is inspired by Renaissance era trompe l'oeil ceilings and features geometries that correspond to those of a historic leaded glass ceiling that was once installed above the room where the "three-dimensional" drawing is currently located.

The installation changes as one moves around it. Image courtesy of Children's Museum of Pittsburgh.

The original ceiling was removed as part of a 1970s-era renovation of the historic former Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny building that now houses the museum. Describing the design, Brennan Buck, partner at FreelandBuck, said, "The intricacy of the original ceiling allowed us to create a dense cloud of lines overhead while clearly evoking the ornamental style of the original building."

Corner detail of the installation. Image courtesy of Children's Museum of ...

Pratt Institute hosts Robert Irwin 'Site Determined' exhibition and panel discussion

2018-09-06T12:15:00-04:00

The post is brought to you by Pratt Institute.

When Robert Irwin: Site Determined opened last year at the University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), it was the first museum exhibition dedicated to the creative process of one of the most significant American artists of the postwar generation. The visitor is invited to explore four decades of Irwin’s outdoor environmental projects through rarely exhibited drawings and architectural models.

Site-determined art, Irwin has explained, “draws all of its cues (reasons for being) from its surroundings.” This exhibition promises insights into Irwin’s working process as he developed aesthetic responses to such cues, including his Window Wall on the CSULB campus, Central Garden at the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles, and his most recent site-determined work, Untitled (dawn to dusk), in Marfa, Texas. Robert Irwin: Site Determined at Pratt Institute will include a new piece never shown before publicly.

This exhi...

This Instagram page draws famous buildings, showing off the sketch process via timelapse

2018-08-31T13:32:00-04:00

Sam Picardal is a New York based artist and architectural illustrator running the Instagram account @21.am, which shows off their sketching process for drawing buildings by famous architects. Capturing their practice via timelapse, the page posts videos of Picardal hand drawing landmark works such as the Art Gallery of Alberta by Frank Gehry, The Tower Bridge in London, Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, and even the Millennium Falcon. Entire cityscapes are given the pen-and-ink treatment as well, as are various spacecrafts and robotics.

Vintage photos remind of the profession before AutoCAD

2018-08-20T17:04:00-04:00

Before the advent of AutoCAD and other drafting softwares, the engineering drawings were made on sheet of papers using drawing boards. Many equipments were required to complete a given drawing such as drawing board, different grade pencils, Erasers T-squares, Set square etc.

Check out this fun collection of photographs from the pre-CAD era...

“Architectural Ethnography”: Japan's 2018 Venice Biennale Pavilion depicts city life in architectural drawings from the last 20 years

2018-05-31T14:50:00-04:00

Atelier Bow-Wow co-founder Momoyo Kaijima teamed up with Laurent Stalder (ETH Zurich Professor of Theory of Architecture, Director of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture) and Yu Iseki (Curator at Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito) to curate the Japan Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Biennale, now open at The Giardini. Titled “Architectural Ethnography”, the exhibition is derived from an ongoing project that Kaijima started working on in the late '90s.

The exhibition takes the form of a “guidebook” that features 42 architectural drawings from the last 20 years — created by university design studios, architecture firms, and contemporary art practices across the globe — that depict the realities of everyday city-living.

Installation view of “Architectural Ethnography” in the Japan Pavilion, 2018.

Installation vi...

Into the Uncanny Valley

2018-04-24T15:17:00-04:00

Architectural representations often embody the tension between familiar and unfamiliar. In an effective rendering, the new buildings or landscapes share the same illusionistic space with images of existing buildings or landscapes, producing an almost exquisite confusion between real and unreal.

Architectural renderings are not photographs; or are they? Susan Piedmont-Palladino examines the hyper-real imagined worlds of contemporary architectural drawings through theories of the uncanny, and considers the disconcerting effect that occurs when "we can't quite sort out the relationship of an image to the world."

MoMA celebrates Frank Lloyd Wright's 150th birthday with comprehensive exhibition of his archives

2017-06-06T13:58:00-04:00

If you've ever wanted to see the original physical model of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in person, you're in the luck: starting June 12th (with a live-streamed press preview on June 8th, which you can watch here), the Museum of Modern Art will display its Frank Lloyd Wright archive to celebrate the legendary architect's 150th birthday. Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, which includes drawings, building fragments, never before seen photographs, film clips and other iconic leavings, will be publicly viewable until October 1st. (PS: For further Frank Lloyd Wright coverage, keep your eyes peeled: Archinect is working on some special pieces for FLW's actual birthday, June 8th.)

Instant, customizable digital architectural stencils hit the market

2016-09-06T14:38:00-04:00

With a press release that makes references to Banksy's iconic global stencils, the new digital architectural stencil set from Morpholio enables architects to instantly make customizable stencils of complex designs, from faces to condo layouts to intricately shaded trees. The initial image can come from a photograph, drawing, or render.

As Toru Hasegawa, co-creator of Morpholio Trace Pro explains: "Software should mirror the gestures, intuition and behavior of the creative. Trace Pro seeks to amplify it, and in doing so, make it as smart and elastic as possible."

This video illustrates the process, which involves gliding the stencil tool over a particular design, capturing it, and then replicating it/editing it at will with the assorted tool bars:

A milkman's drawings capture Bristol through 8 decades

2016-06-02T16:38:00-04:00

[Garth England's] extraordinary drawings, made in Hengrove Lodge care home between 2006 and 2013 and published in a beautiful book called Murdered with Straight Lines, capture the changing city through the eyes of this post-war everyman. Born in Bristol general hospital in 1935, England spent most of his 79 years in the city’s suburban south: in Knowle West, Hengrove, Bedminster and Totterdown...

The essence of a city isn't just contained in its physical brick and mortar, but in the memory of its denizens. Garth England, who managed to see virtually every type of structure in Bristol in his work as a milk delivery man, began to draw his artistic recollections while in a retirement home, many of which are not only of historical architectural value, but incorporate stories of how certain objects and structures played a role in daily, intimate life:

As the piece notes, “There is something very truthful to Bristol’s suburban development in the details, almost like a social history,” says architectural historian Andrew Foyle, who lives in south Bristol. “What struck me was how extraordinarily accurate to specific houses a lot of Garth’s work is. If you put the Grange at 258 Wells Road, Knowle into Google Maps, for example, you can see he’s completely there.”"

For more on the intersection between art and architecture, check out these original Archinect features:

paraSITE: the bandage...

Winners of the "Drawing from Practice" book giveaway

2015-09-02T14:32:00-04:00

Archinectors were keen to share their favorite architectural-drawing influences in Archinect's latest book giveaway, "Drawing from Practice, Architects and the Meaning of Freehand" by J. Michael Welton. The 221-page book is a practitioner's handy reference for freehand-drawing inspiration and an adept resource to anyone who's curious about the creative processes behind some of today's most influential architects.

With many thoughtful responses, it was tough picking only five winners. They are:

Adora T.
Harmony C.
Jerome S.
Zephyr A.
Steven W.

Congrats to the winners, and thanks to everyone who participated!

Win "Drawing from Practice, Architects and the Meaning of Freehand" by J. Michael Welton

2015-08-21T14:32:00-04:00

"Drawing from Practice, Architects and the Meaning of Freehand" by architectural writer J. Michael Welton is a practitioner's handy reference for freehand-drawing inspiration and an adept resource to anyone who's curious about the creative processes behind some of today's most influential architects.

The 221-page book includes more than 200 full-color drawings from an international range of architects. With ample research, Welton guides readers through the creative process of 26 of today's most prominent architects, from the initial sketch to the final product.

The book explores the drawings of:

Aidlin Darling Design, Alberto Alfonso, Deborah Berke, Marlon Blackwell, Peter Bohlin, Warren Byrd, Ellen Cassilly, Jim Cutler, Chad Everhart, Formwork, Phil Freelon, Michael Graves, Frank Harmon, Eric Höweler and Meejin Yoon, Léon Krier, Tom Kundig, Daniel Libeskind, Brian McKay Lyons, Richard Meier, Bill Pedersen, Suchi Reddy, Witold Rybczynski, in situ studio, Laurinda Spear, Stanley Tigerma...

Photorealistic cityscapes drawn in pencil only

2015-07-28T14:53:00-04:00

Paul Cadden’s work is astoundingly realistic.

If you think straining over Photoshop for hours on end sweating out the nuances of that latest rendering of a project is time-consuming, Paul Cadden voluntarily spends his time drawing photo-realistic versions of photographs with pencil. Only pencil. According to the artist's website, "Although the drawings and paintings I make are based upon photographs, videos stills etc., the idea is to go beyond the photograph. The photo is used to create a subtler and much more complex focus on the subject depicted. The virtual image becomes the living image, an intensification of the normal. These objects and scenes in my drawings are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a new reality not seen in in the original photo." The results, which frequently incorporate cityscapes, are worth a look:

Editor's Picks #362

2014-04-08T18:37:00-04:00

Amelia conducted an i nterview with John Szot answering questions on Architecture and the Unspeakable, a triptych of short, magnificently animated films.

News

Professor Andrew Ross, penned an editorial High Culture and Hard Labor regarding Guggenheim Museum’s Saadiyat Island project. Later, Al Jazeera America looked at the efforts by Global Ultra Luxury Faction, an offshoot of Gulf Labor (Professor Ross is a member) "working since 2011 to bring attention to the conditions that the workers on Saadiyat Island withstand".

Miles Jaffe pondered "Where does an architect's responsibility begin and where does it end?"

Ayesha Ghosa provided a recap of Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s recent talk at GSAPP's spring lecture series.

"Basically to summarize, for political activism to enact change, Mouffe believes it is better to intervene and transform the existing codes rather than ‘start from scratch.’...In the systemic interventions and transformations she proposes – Mouffe seems to...

Extraordinarily Beautiful Architectural Drawings From the World's Greatest Architects

2014-02-07T16:58:00-05:00

100 Years of Architectural Drawing—a recently published book by Neil Bingham, a design and architecture historian who is the consulting curator of architectural drawings at the Royal Academy of Arts, London—highlights 300 architectural drawings from the 20th century that illustrate the evolution of the form.

André Chiote illustrates the role of iconic buildings in the "urban collective memory"

2013-12-09T13:52:00-05:00

Rendered into clean lines and bold graphic hues, Oporto-based architect and illustrator André Chiote draws some of the world's most iconic contemporary structures designed by their equally iconic architects. He began developing this project by choosing specifically-programmed buildings that became cultural symbols eventually engrained into the "urban collective memory."

Even by only highlighting a particular detail, the building is still recognizable whether one remembers seeing it on TV, online, in print, or in person. The souvenir poster/advertisement-like quality of Chiote's illustrative style further emphasizes the popularity of these structures.

In his last approach, Chiote illustrated famous museums like Renzo Piano's addition to LACMA or the Mercedez-Benz Museum by UNStudio, among others.

Chiote continues exploring the role of these memorable buildings with "Sport's Buildings" -- many that have been seen in past Olympic Games. Here, he describes them as examples of "...

Just Launched: the 39th Annual KRob Architectural Delineation Competition

2013-09-06T20:40:00-04:00

The annual KRob Architectural Delineation Competition is coming back for its 39th year. The competition was established in 1974 by the AIA Dallas Chapter and named after architect Ken Roberts who was recognized for his talent in ink perspective drawing. As the world's oldest architectural drawing competition currently in operation, KRob recognizes original works that best represent the artistic qualities of the medium in both hand-drawn and digital formats.

Click on the thumbnails below to see winning images from previous KRob competitions in recent years. You can also check out this article by Julien Meyrat, one of the KRob competition organizers at the AIA Dallas, for an insightful read on architectural drawing.

2013 National Design Award Winner James Wines among speakers at Saturday 5/11 "WWW Drawing" symposium in NY

2013-05-09T18:30:00-04:00

The (de)vices and virtues of hand drawing versus digital drawing will be debated at "WWW Drawing: Architectural Drawing from Pencil to Pixel" at the Drawing Center, in SoHo New York, this Saturday May 11 from 2-4 pm — a symposium co-produced by Penn State University's Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the Drawing Center.

Speakers include renowned architects James Wines (just-announced 2013 National Design Award Winner for Lifetime Achievement, and President of SITE Architecture, Art & Design), Michael Webb (Archigram, Cooper Union), and Mark West (University of Manitoba) — the "Ws" of the project title — along with five rising stars of computational design, fine art, architecture and programming: Daniel Cardoso Llach, Andrew Heumann, Seher Shah, Ann Tarantino and Jürg Lehni.

A new documentary video of the March 2013 WWW Drawing Workshop at Penn State U will debut at the symposium, which will be co-moderated by Stuckeman School Head of Architectur...

Editor's Picks #314

2013-05-07T13:14:00-04:00

Over at the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne reported on LACMA Director Michael Govan’s plan’s for $650-million new building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor...Eric Chavkin commented "New construction has always been fundraising tail that wags the museum dog. Big names to draw bigger money...Now that AMPAS is leveraging it's Oscar prestige to be a part of LACMA, a new name to entice donor dollars is Zumthor, a name that means absolutely nothing to most.

News
Michael Z Wise reviewed the newest edition of Albert Speer, Architecture by Léon Krier for the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Wise concluded his review "Though he is again bemoaning a contemporary inability to regard classicism in a detached manner, it is Léon Krier who is in a delirious thrall to a malevolent aesthetic".

Will Galloway was surprised "wow, i didn't need another reason to dislike krier, but this one certainly seems more than enough to set aside any other complaint about the guy and never revisit them. its amazing that someone could hate modernism so much that even hitler's vision for the world seems palatable to him. nasty". For his part Steven Ward
argued "I'd rather see the swastika redeemed for its original associations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika) than see any redemption of Speer's work. It's not that the style(s) from which he borrowed were bad so much as his intentional bombastic over-scaling of everything. These buildings were meant to communicat...

Editor's Picks #309

2013-04-02T11:00:00-04:00

Archinect was excited to announce a competition we're co-hosting with Designer Pages and the LA Film Festival. This competition seeks proposals for the interior design/layout of the VIP Director's Lounge for this year's LA Film Festival. The winner will have their design executed, with a cash prize and an "Industry Badge" pass to the LA Film Festival in June. The winner's designs will also be on display in the director's lounge throughout the festival.

News
The Architect’s Journal reported that Denise Scott Brown has called for her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 win to be acknowledged retrospectively as a salute to "the notion of joint creativity" and retrospectively acknowledge her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 Pritzker Prize during an AJ Women in Architecture luncheon in late March. Since, nearly 2,000 advocates have passionately rallied in Brown’s support by signing an online petition created by Harvard’s GSD Woman in Design Group. Among the signatures include architects Zaha...