On the occasion of the anniversary exhibition of the Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin, Sir Peter Cook, Mikkel Frost, Jean-Louis Cohen, Sergei Tchoban and the show’s curator Eva-Maria Barkhofen will discuss architectural drawing through the ages and its artistic role in the design process with moderator Natascha Meuser.
Museums reveal local and shared heritage. As cultural institutions embedded in the fabric of modern life, each museum serves as a window into history and human exchange. Made to promote understanding and provoke new ideas, these monumental buildings are inspired by spatial exploration. With some of the most influential museum projects in the world, Germany is home to a range of diverse institutions showcasing unique approaches to curating, taxonomy and spatial organization.
The Tchoban Foundation - Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin shared with us this article about the exhibition Siza: Unseen and Unknown curated by architect António Choupina together with Dr. h. c. Kristin Feireiss. According to them, "this exhibition was conceived as a family show, not in the sense of an architectural dynasty but rather as a lyrical collection of drawings from the architect’s private surroundings". The selected drawings are from the Siza family’s own collection and include sketches from known and less well-known projects, as well as architectural fantasies.
Álvaro Siza was born in 1933, on the same year that the Bauhaus closed its doors. He is perhaps the last living modernist or, at the very least, the most significant voice to carry out the unfinished modernist project all the way into the 21st century.
Siza: Unseen and Unknown showcases this continuity through 100 sketches, as well as its unavoidable contradictions. These drawings are from his most personal archive, in addition to small collections of close friends and family. Hence, they focus not only on the professional legacy but also on the familial one, where Maria Antónia Siza (1940-1973) takes centre stage. His wife will draw him, he will draw her and the loving embrace of the human body will be transversal to architecture, art, life.
"How does a thought evolve into a freehand sketch? What is the importance of the interaction between the mind, eyes and hand?“
The computer does things correctly, and I think it's very important in architecture to also have the incorrect. – Peter Cook
In connection with the exhibition "Peter Cook. Retrospective" currently on view at the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin, the Tchoban Foundation has released a video of the architect discussing the importance of drawing in the architectural world. Cook compares drawing to new computer-based techniques, arguing that while software can do amazing things (including being instrumental in realizing his own Kunsthaus Gratz), drawing allows the architect to learn, communicate and experiment in a way that is irreplaceable. Watch the teaser to the Tchoban Foundation's video above, or read on for the full discussion.
After receiving his education at the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in St. Petersburg, Sergei Tchoban moved to Germany at the age of 30. He now runs parallel practices in both Berlin and Moscow, after becoming managing partner of nps tchoban voss in 2003 and co-founding SPEECH with Sergey Kuznetsov in 2006. In 2009, the Tchoban Foundation was formed in Berlin to celebrate the lost art of drawing through exhibitions and publications. The Foundation’s Museum for Architectural Drawing was built in Berlin in 2013 to Tchoban’s design. In this latest interview for his “City of Ideas” series, Vladimir Belogolovsky spoke to Tchoban during their recent meeting in Paris about architectural identities, inspirations, the architect’s fanatical passion for drawing, and such intangibles as beauty.
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).
Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing is hosting its second exhibition from Sir John Soane's Museum, showing masterpieces of British Neoclassicism. The exhibition illustrates the ambition of leading British architects of the late 18th century who strove to create new architecture in the Classical tradition that could compete – in terms of public works, private houses, mausolea, interior detail and even furnishings - with the glories of the Ancient World.
Treasury, in the Bibliowicz Gallery, highlights the wider international collection of the museum with sketches and drawings by Hans Poelzig, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, Peter Wilson, and Madelon Vriesendorp, cofounder of OMA.
Starting October 18th, the Tchoban Foundation will be showing 65 art works of Hôtel particulier buildings – prestigious town houses, which were built in the first part of the 18th century and characterize Parisian architecture until today - in the exhibition “Lʼhôtel particulier à Paris.” After Sergei Tchoban, architect and founder of the Tchoban Foundation for Architectural Drawing, showed his collection of 24 drawings at the École des Beaux-Arts in 2011 with the exhibition “À la source de l’ Antique. La collection de Sergei Tchoban”, the two institutions now continue their collaboration, this time with a selection of works from Paris that will be displayed in Berlin.
