TRANSITIONS: CONCEPTS + DRAWINS + BUILDINGS

Skrevet af CHRISTINE HAWLEY

Most architectural books written by practising architects fall into two
categories: theoretical texts, or monographs that describe and
illustrate the author's projects. This book combines both, as it
explores and illustrates the methodological journey required to
translate a concept to a drawing and a drawing to a building.

While
the term 'methodological' might imply an Aristotelian logic, there is
no attempt here to rationalise the process of conception, but instead an
acknowledgement of an experimental approach that presupposes a subtle
knowledge of the projects. It shows the architect's fascination with the
'opaque' and the 'not said' and illustrates how architecture works
through agreement and contradiction (e.g. the built and the un-built,
material and immaterial).

Organised into three essays Urban
Collage, Ground Surface, Shadows and Lines, the book examines how
conceptual threads begin to compose a specific architectural design
'language' and how they interweave from one direction to another.
Importantly, the projects that illustrate the text also demonstrate how
imperative or marginal the original ideas become and, to an extent they
demonstrate the design process: its successes, illogicality and
failures. The essays also discuss the importance of iteration through
time where ideas may occasionally be developed as a linear process, but
more often emerge through a series of creative digressions. Although the
essays and the projects have dominant themes, these should not be
regarded as autonomous, as throughout the development of both drawings
and buildings, ideas inevitably segue from one domain to another. Ideas
have both fluidity and the ability to transform.