For the past three weeks, I’ve kept a volume of Robert A. M. Stern’s work on my bedside table, along with Henry Russell Hitchcock’s biography of H. H. Richardson. But more on Richardson later. The drawing above shows a small garden folly elevation by Stern as well as a nine-square courtyard house it inspired below. More Stern-spiration to come.
While my wife and I were shopping the housing market, I couldn’t help but consider the possibilities of each property. While we did not settle on this particular house, it’s living room could have used a strong, cubic, skylight volume – clad in silver leaf, of course.
In a change of pace, I’ll share a quick plan and section study of another architect’s work – Gunnar Asplund’s Woodland Chapel in Stockholm. A classical portico and a domed sanctuary hide under a large hip roof. Schematic details of jamb conditions of my own making grace the top.
These drawings attempt to synthesize how a linear basilica form might stem from a square volume. The first drawing is intentionally church-like, but I find the two derivations below to be more interesting – the first with apses at either end, and accessed from the short axis; the second with the stair tower volumes repeated, more of a town-hall.
The bathroom here at my office has the toilet and the sink in opposite corners from each other. If one were to make the room perfectly square, and superimpose it in a panelled volume, with an incredibly fancy jib door, what might that look like? Plan and RCP (reflected ceiling plan) on top of one another, with studies of what to do with the left over corners.
A glass gallery surrounded by a Doric peristyle, within an Ungers-esque wrapper – in plan, elevation, wormseye, and corner details.
Since it’s opening day here at frame, I’ll leave you with something on the other end of the stylistic spectrum. Shallow bay windows normally found on turn of the last century skyscrapers are set next to a tall rural gable to make up the front facade. The bucolic villa type meets urban detail.
My client had just built a new greenhouse on his Malibu estate – it was awful. But the open framework of black steel and plexiglass infill on the roof and walls intrigued me. What about Mies in California, Neutra even?
I hope not. At least, not in the traditional sense. While I consider myself to be a writer, I do not intend to make this place about words. One of the most wonderful and accessible qualities of architecture is that it is a visual practice, and of the many ways of describing and communicating buildings, drawing remains the most poignant and essential. While historians write dissertations on the social, economic, or ecological impacts of architecture on our world, those who practice and learn our profession must draw architecture. The drawing is the fundamental communicative tool of the discipline – be it plan, section, elevation, reflected ceiling plan, or axonometric. As architects, we draw. And I believe we can draw argument – I believe that the architectural forms that I draw say something about what I believe architecture is, how it ought to be practiced, and rightly taught.
This website, frame, is my attempt to catalog my own arguments through drawing. I’ll try not to speak up too much outside of that, only adding the necessary introductions here and there (or references, for your own perusal). With that, enjoy.
-Nicholas
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