Drawings: The Latest Architecture and News

The “Never Built” world so far includes Never Built Los Angeles, a book and exhibit, and the book, Never Built New York. Now, the Queens Museum hopes to continue the exploration into the New York that might have been with a Never Built New York exhibition and has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $35,000 to make it happen. The exhibition, curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin and designed by Christian Wassmann, will explore 200 years of wild schemes and unbuilt projects that had the potential to vastly alter the New York we know today.

+ 2

"New Khmer Architecture and Japan" is the first show in Cambodian History to focus on the architectural drawings of its modern movement. Cambodia is a country with mature architectural culture, not only of the great Angkorian heritage and vernacular timber temples, but also of modern buildings from the 1950s and 60s known as New Khmer Architecture. Since the 1990s, in the context of the post-war redefinition of the national identity as well as the recent expansion of environmental consciousness, this Cambodian modern movement, with their sensibility to the traditional culture and tropical climate, is being re-evaluated; though the drawings and documents of the movement were believed to be destroyed and lost in the turmoil of the Civil War.

+ 7

Videos

Rafael Araujo is a Venezuelan architect and illustrator who at the age of fifteen began to observe intelligent patterns in nature, giving rise to his interest in the golden ratio located in our natural environment.

More than 40 years later, the results of this hobby is a collection of beautiful illustrations of nature made entirely by hand, equipped with a pencil, a compass, a ruler and a protractor.

The artist's illustrations give his ability to represent the mathematical brilliance of the natural world, inciting the reunion of humans with nature.

+ 13

As the birthplace of our most recent Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Aravena, Santiago, Chile is full of iconic architecture. Because many of these buildings are situated in busy urban areas, their superior design is easy to miss. In an effort to encourage viewers to slow down and appreciate the volume, facades, context, and function of these urban landmarks, Benjamin Oportot and Alexandra Gray of San Sebastian University guided their 4th-year students in producing axonometric drawings of 11 buildings. The project centered on medium-sized office buildings built between 1989 and 2015, particularly focusing on their use of reinforced concrete.

Videos

More than 6 million courses have been created for Super Mario Maker, a video game where players can create their own game levels with all of the available tools of the Mario universe. The plumber, who has entertained millions of people around the world with his adventures, turned 30 last September, the date of the release of his first solo odyssey, Super Mario Bros. The rest, as we know, is history.

A few months ago, for the premiere of Super Mario Maker at the last Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 2015), Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, the creators of Super Mario Bros, explained how they designed the levels of the classic Nintendo video game in 1985: on graph paper.

That's right, using graph paper and tracing paper, the Japanese artists drew each level in detail, adding and editing the position of enemies, traps, and even designing the game's cover art.

+ 6

The Albertina is one of the most prominent collections in the world with over one million works covering six centuries of art history, from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the present day. Its world famous Graphic Collection, rich in tradition, is by far the largest and most important department. The Architecture Collection of the Albertina is by no means less significant. It too spans across many periods, encompassing works by well-known architects. The exhibition in the Berlin Museum for Architectural Drawing allows a glimpse into this fantastic collection, showing hand drawn architecture across a wide spectrum with sketches, studies, vedute and project presentations by exceptional artists and architects such as Antonio Pisanello (1395–1455), Francesco Borromini (1599–1667), Hubert Robert (1733–1808), Egon Schiele (1890–1918), Hans Hollein (1934–2014) and Zaha Hadid (born 1950).

Norway based architecture studio Vardehaugen has created a series of life-sized project drawings in its own backyard. Inspired by the idea that the "bodily sensation of scale, or the notion of simply walking through a room, cannot be experienced through traditional 3D visualizations or scaled models," the 1:1 models allow for better understandings of dimensions and spatial sequences, even before the projects are built.

In the architecture world, there are a handful of persistent debates that arise time and time again: the challenges of being a woman in the field of architecture is one of them, for example; the problems of a culture of long hours and hard work is another. But one of the most enduring arguments in architecture - especially in the academic sphere - is the battle between hand drawing and computer aided design. Both schools have their famous proponents: Michael Graves, for example, was known as a huge talent with a pencil and paper, and came to the defense of drawing in articles for the New York Times, among others. Patrik Schumacher, on the other hand, is famous for his commitment to the capabilities of the computer.

To advance this heated conversation, two weeks ago we reached out to our readers to provide their thoughts on this topic in an attempt to get a broad cross-section of opinions from architects from all walks of life. Read some of the best responses after the break.