Architect Drawings : A Selection of Sketches by World Famous Architects Through History
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Smithson, Alison (1928–1993)<br />
Sketch plans for two Snowball Appliance Houses, 1957, Canadian Centre for <strong>Architect</strong>ure,<br />
DR 1995:0052, 12 11.5cm, Pen and black ink on tracing paper<br />
The Smithson’s greatest influence on the architectural world came through their writing, teaching,<br />
and competition entries. Although devoted to pr<strong>of</strong>essional practice, they balanced building with<br />
theory, disseminating their ideas concerning social issues <strong>of</strong> housing.<br />
British <strong>by</strong> nationality, Alison was born in Yorkshire and Peter in County Durham. They met<br />
while studying in the Department <strong>of</strong> <strong>Architect</strong>ure at the University <strong>of</strong> Durham, Newcastle.<br />
Marrying in 1949, they won the commission to design the Hunstanton Secondary Modern School.<br />
Active in CIAM, the Smithson’s organization <strong>of</strong> the 1953 conference earned them the adage Team<br />
X. Their colleague Reyner Banham described their work as brutalist, with dominant use <strong>of</strong> concrete<br />
structures and rationalist form. The Smithson’s writings challenged architects to re-examine basic<br />
tenets about housing and urban theory. They designed the prototype House <strong>of</strong> the Future (1956);<br />
headquarters for The Economist magazine in St. James’ Piccadilly (1964); British Embassy in Brasilia<br />
(1964) (unbuilt); Garden Building at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford (1967–1970); Robin Hood Gardens<br />
apartment complex (1966–1972); and buildings at Bath University starting in 1978.<br />
Interested in social aspects <strong>of</strong> living, the Smithson’s most prominent housing project was the<br />
Robin Hood Gardens. They designed rows <strong>of</strong> apartments in linear buildings dispersed with plazas.<br />
Eventually unsuccessful because <strong>of</strong> crime, their sensitive architecture could not keep the complex<br />
from falling into social disarray.<br />
Constantly exploring theoretical ideas, the Smithsons used sketches extensively. Many <strong>of</strong> these<br />
sketches take the form <strong>of</strong> diagrams that they called ideograms (Smithson, 2001). These simple images<br />
were <strong>of</strong>ten very small, using few lines. With these sketches the Smithsons were critically reviewing<br />
conceptual theories (analysis) while demonstrating a visual communication between the two <strong>of</strong><br />
them. With their precise qualities, the sketches feel cartoon-like, having firm, unbroken lines and<br />
act very much like a parti. This sketch <strong>by</strong> Alison (Figure 7.16) is a diagram for an appliance house.<br />
Iterated in black ink on tracing paper, the lines are single thickness, some showing heavier and others<br />
lighter, as if two pens were used. Soon after the prototype for the House <strong>of</strong> the Future, the appliance<br />
houses were based on the concept <strong>of</strong> prefabricated housing. This intention was not so much<br />
concerned with the manufacture <strong>of</strong> these units but with the spaces necessary for the inhabitants.<br />
The Smithson’s had been conceiving <strong>of</strong> two different organizations, one linear and the other clustered<br />
like a snowball. 6 This small sketch shows numerous circular shapes within a larger enclosure <strong>of</strong><br />
the snowball parti. The notion <strong>of</strong> this house was to gather all <strong>of</strong> the ‘appliances’ or functional aspects<br />
<strong>of</strong> the house (on one side) leaving a large area for family living.<br />
These very concise sketches reveal Alison Smithson’s thinking. The bedrooms remain circles in<br />
each iteration, possibly because circles are faster to draw than squares and these sketches were not concerned<br />
with the bedrooms but rather the ‘appliance’ spaces. With this example, Alison Smithson was<br />
rendering the functional spaces <strong>of</strong> most concern to her, abstracting the rooms less important at the<br />
moment. More time has been taken to sketch the kitchen, for example, although it takes on an<br />
amoeba shape. This sketch emphasizes the popularity <strong>of</strong> ‘bubble’ diagrams. A technique to study only<br />
one aspect <strong>of</strong> a project, bubble diagrams are not plans in a strict sense, but show adjacencies. Here the<br />
‘bubbles’ inflluenced the shape <strong>of</strong> the rooms in this early stage <strong>of</strong> the process.<br />
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