Design Processes Study Room Resource box Teachers’ Notes When booking your visit to the V&A Prints & Drawings room, also pre-book the Design Processes resource box. Detailed booking information is available at www.vam.ac.uk/schools. The objects from the box will be put on display for you to look at when you arrive. The following information will help you to explain to your students what they are looking at. You might choose to examine a sample of the items as a group, before allowing students to look independently. The items in the resource box show a diverse range of design processes which you could try out with your students back at school/college. The objects are original and often fragile items, so please ensure that your students follow the safety instructions given by staff. • Coats and bags must be left in the Sackler Centre Lockers or Museum cloakrooms before you visit the Prints & Drawings Study Room. • Pencils only can be used in the Prints & Drawings Study Room. • Move carefully around the room, ensuring students don’t jog tables, chairs or lean on items • Take care not to sneeze or cough over the works Objects in the Design Processes resource box: 1. Richard Buckminster Fuller, (1895-1983) Sketch design for geodesic dome 1972 Drawing RIBA No. SD139/7 www.ribapix.com RIBA13406 RIBA Library Drawings Collection This sketch was drawn by Fuller on the back of an envelope at a meeting with Dr Thomas Howarth in Toronto, Canada in early 1972. This was five years after Fuller had designed a dome for the United States pavilion at Expo 67’ in www.vam.ac.uk/schools 1 Montreal – one of the fullest applications of Fuller’s idea. The drawing shows how the structural members of the dome are linked to create the geodesic shapes and how the perfect sphere that the structure creates is adapted to sit on the ground. Architects like Archigram and Cedric Price designed schemes in the 60s and 70s which borrowed from this technology that Fuller had invented. Since then other British architects, such as Norman Foster and Richard Rogers have continued Fuller’s ideological commitment to technology. Even more recently, the work of Nicholas Grimshaw at the Eden Project in Cornwall has used Fuller’s Geodesic dome structure as its model. 2. Sir Ove Arup (1895-1988) Sydney Opera House preliminary sketches 1961 Drawing on tracing paper RIBA No. (DR3/6) www.RIBApix.com RIBA13375 RIBA Library Drawings Collection When Utzon won the Sydney Opera House competition in January 1957, no one knew how to build the roof structure he had designed. Utzon's original concept showed huge, billowing shells resting on narrow points, but the engineer, Ove Arup, saw that the shells would not sustain the forces they would generate. They were also irregular in shape and could not be defined mathematically. 'We had no precedent to go on', said Utzon. 'It was like climbing Mount Everest for the first time.' Three years later, when work on site had already started, he found the answer - in an orange. By cutting 'spherical triangles' from the skin, he discovered a regular basis for the irregular forms he wished to create. Arup was then able to design a structure in which a framework of pre-fabricated, tapering ribs of identical curvature would support a thin skin. The idea of frameless shells had been lost, but Utzon's vision could now be realised. www.vam.ac.uk/schools 2 In this drawing, you can see Arup working out his idea with an initial sketch and a perspective showing the complicated construction process involved in assembling the roof of the Opera House. 3. Denis and Mary Mason Jones Sketchbook recording a visit to Egypt and Jordan March 1982 and February-March1999 Pen, pencil, coloured pencils and photographic prints RIBA No. SKB407/1 www.ribapix.com RIBA35545 RIBA Library Drawings Collection Architects often keep journals and sketchbooks on their travels in which they can sketch interesting architectural details that they encounter or note down ideas that are inspired by their unfamiliar surroundings. This volume contains travel notes, colourful sketches of buildings, people and animals seen during two visits to Egypt and Jordan by the architects Denis and Mary Mason Jones in the 1980’s and ‘90’s. The sketchbook also contains photographs of Denis and his wife during these two trips. These pages feature the stepped pyramid at Sakhara. 4. George Grey Wornum (1888-1957) Design for the replanning of the Parliament Square, Westminster 1949 Drawing on photograph RIBA No.PA184/4 (12) www.RIBApix.com RIBA20111 RIBA Library Drawings Collection These drawings are from a series made for George ‘Grey’ Wornum to illustrate his scheme for the re- www.vam.ac.uk/schools 3 design of Parliament Square after the Second World War. Many presentation drawings such as this were not made by the architects themselves. This is a good example of a work process whereby a junior in the office of Wornum, Dennis Mason Jones (see item 3.), made the drawing. On the original drawing, you can see his name recorded under that of Wornum’s. These drawings have been made directly onto photographs of the site. This is an effective method for showing how additions or amendments will impact on an existing site. Parliament square was a key example of the type of public space which was the subject of great attention just after the war. Much criticism was aimed at spaces that did not allow public gatherings or leisure. Features such as roundabouts became pet hates of architecture critics like Gordon Cullen in the Architectural Review and much effort was channelled to ensure that spaces created as part of post-war reconstruction were ‘sociable’. 5. Lasdun & Drake Explanatory site plan for Hallfield Primary School, Paddington, London. 1950s Drawing on tracing paper PB886/3 (28) www.RIBApix.com RIBA41485 RIBA Library Drawings Collection This drawing shows the school buildings represented as natural plant forms including leaves, twigs, flowers and seed pods. When viewed in tandem with the next plan of Hallfield School (PB868/3 (3), it is possible to see how Lasdun attempted to translate these natural forms into architectural spaces. Classrooms were imagined as leaves branching off a stem which functioned as the corridor linking the teaching spaces together. www.vam.ac.uk/schools 4 If you underlay this drawing behind the ground floor plan it is possible to see how well the idea of biomorphic forms fits the plan of the building as it was eventually built. 6. Lasdun & Drake Design for Hallfield Primary School, Paddington, London: ground floor plan with key and revisions 1952 Drawing on tracing paper RIBA No. PB886/3 (3) www.RIBApix.com RIBA41482 RIBA Library Drawings Collection When we look at this drawing for the ground floor plan of Hallfield School in conjunction with the conceptual plan (PB886/3 (28) ), it seems clear that the plan derived from the precise geometries laid down by the plant which Lasdun was imitating. William Curtis, author of a monograph on Denys Lasdun, has describes his response to the building and its surroundings: “The result is a coherent sculptural image, but one that is grasped piece by piece, incident by incident, as one moves from the public space of the estate to the increasingly closed world of the school. The scale has been cut down to that of a child’s world: enclosed, dappled by light and shade, surrounded by plants, capable of receiving fantasy.” 7. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) Design for the GPO Telephone Kiosk, No 2 1924 Drawing RIBA No. PA2081/SCGG [180] (4) www.ribapix.com RIBA2910-27 RIBA Library Drawings Collection www.vam.ac.uk/schools 5 This elevation drawing shows one face of a building, with no perspective. This elevation shows a traditional red telephone box, designed by George Gilbert Scott Junior and first produced in 1922. Scott’s design is regarded as a fine example of industrial design in which Classical proportion and details were completely integrated with function. In addition the sheet features a plan and section drawing. 8. Design for the Swiss Re Building Plans of ground floor, level 6, level 21, level 33, level 39 & level 40 Foster Associates 1997-2004 Inkjet print RIBA No. DR139/6(1) www.RIBApix.com RIBA41483 RIBA Library Drawings Collection The Swiss Re HQ, 30 St Mary Axe, designed by Foster Associates, was London’s first ecological high-rise building. Its natural ventilation system uses half the energy taken up by an ordinary air-conditioned skyscraper. Nicknamed ‘The Gherkin’ due to its unusual torpedo shape, its silhouette has become an iconic feature of the city’s skyline. This Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) shows how the plan of each floor is focused around a unifying central core and the circular perimeter widens towards the middle of the building before tapering at the top. This gives the building its distinctive profile, which appears more elegant and takes up less space than a traditional rectangular tower block. Computer Aided Design or CAD refers to the use of a computer in the design or construction process of a building. The computer can carry out complicated analysis and calculations quickly, allowing the architect to test the structure for weight bearing potential or resistance to external pressures such as the wind. Complex three-dimensional perspectives can be produced that can even simulate the experience of walking through the proposed building. www.vam.ac.uk/schools 6 9. George Grey Wornum (1888-1957) Competition design for the Royal Institute of British Architects, 66 Portland Place, London: section showing the Henry Jarvis Memorial Hall, landings and offices Circa 1931 PA2046/1 (23) www.ribapix.com RIBA35977 RIBA Library Drawings Collection This section drawing is one of 3600 designs submitted by 284 entrants in the competition to design a new and permanent home for the RIBA in the late 1920s.