Stories from Architecture Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter

by Lewis, Philippa; Forty, Adrian

• ISBN13: 9780262543026
• ISBN10: 0262543028
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2021-10-19
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

The imagined histories of twenty-five architectural drawings and models, told through reminiscences, stories, conversations, letters, and monologues.

Even when an architectural drawing does not show any human figures, we can imagine many different characters just off the page: architects, artists, onlookers, clients, builders, developers, philanthropists—working, observing, admiring, arguing. In Stories from Architecture, Philippa Lewis captures some of these personalities through reminiscences, anecdotes, conversations, letters, and monologues that collectively offer the imagined histories of twenty-five architectural drawings. 
 
Some of these untold stories are factual, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s correspondence with a Wisconsin librarian regarding her $5,000 dream home, or letters written by the English architect John Nash to his irascible aristocratic client. Others recount a fictional, if credible, scenario by placing these drawings—and with them their characters—into their immediate social context. For instance, the dilemmas facing a Regency couple who are considering a move to a suburban villa; a request from the office of Richard Neutra for an assistant to measure Josef von Sternberg’s Rolls-Royce so that the director’s beloved vehicle might fit into the garage being designed by his architect; a teenager dreaming of a life away from parental supervision by gazing at a gadget-filled bachelor pad in Playboy magazine; even a policeman recording the ground plans of the house of a murder scene. 
 
The drawings, reproduced in color, are all sourced from the Drawing Matter collection in Somerset, UK, and are fascinating objects in themselves; but Lewis shifts our attention beyond the image to other possible histories that linger, invisible, beyond the page, and in the process animates not just a series of archival documents but the writing of architectural history.
 

Author Biography

Philippa Lewis is a writer, photographer, and picture editor. She is the author of A Dictionary of Ornament (with Gillian Darley); Details: A Guide to House Design in Britain; Everything You Can Do in the Garden without Actually Gardening; Everyman's Castle; and other books.

Table of Contents

Foreword
 Adrian Forty 9
1 Rex Savidge, Entrance to Commercial Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1957 15
2 Robert Bremmel Schnebbelie, View of the Piccadilly Entrance to Burlington Arcade, London, 1827 19
3 George Marshall, Perspective View of the Interior of St. Stephen’s Walbrook, London, Mid-eighteenth Century 25
4 Moos, Designs for Graveyard Memorials and Tombstones, 1811 29
5 Richard Bentley, Gothick Fireplace, Possibly for Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, Surrey, 1754 37
6 A. Tod, Mr. Tassie’s House, Leicester Square, London, 1806 41
7 Cassius Goldsmith, Design for a Gate Lodge, ca. 1827 45
8 Unattributed French Artist, House in Islamic Style, 1870s 51
9 Richard Neutra, Residence for  Josef von Sternberg, 1935 59
10 Peepshow of Marc Brunel’s Thames Tunnel, 1830s 63
11 Oliver Messel, Model of Bar for the Great Octagon, Bath Assembly Rooms, 1961 69
12 George Coke, Topographical View of the Wall and Trees of London Smallpox Hospital, Coldbath Fields, Clerkenwell, London, 1796 79
13 Frederick G. C. Weir, Proposed Plan for Artisans’ Dwellings, 1875 83
14 PC Harry Woodley, Plans of № 131 Cornwall Street, St. George’s in the East, London, 1902 91
15 Samuel Hardy, Competition Entry for an All-British £1,000 House, 1932 97
16 Robert Bray, Design for a Playboy Duplex Penthouse, Featured in Playboy Magazine, January 1970 103
17 William Beddoe Rees, Selsey-on-Sea Limited, Architect’s Suggested Plan for Development, 1907 111
18 Three Perspective Drawings for an Estate of Villas, Streatham, Surrey, Inscribed “Angelier,” ca. 1825 119
19 Henri Guerbois, Department Store in King Street, Kensington, for Barker’s, 1921 129
20 René-André Coulon, Jeux d’eau et de lumière, 1937 135
21 P. O’Neil, Kitchen Design, ca. 1955 141
22 Gordon M. Hills, Colgate Chapel, Sussex, Proposed Enlargement and Design for Ceiling, 1871 145
23 John Nash, Designs for Langham House, Portland Place, London, ca. 1812–1816 153
24 Frank Lloyd Wright, Ground Plan and Street Elevation of “Below Zero” House for Edith Carlson, 1939 167
25 Antonio Asprucci, Ornamental Detail for the Stanza del Sole, Villa Borghese, Rome, 1775–1780 181
Notes 187
Acknowledgments 213