 | RADAREXHIBITION DRAWING THROUGH ARCHITECTURE
PHOTOGRAPHY LAURA BARKER
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Overviews of Process, the recent exhibition
of drawings and models by Neil Durbach, Alex
Popov and Peter Stutchbury at Utopia Art Sydney.
The gallery was designed by Robert May.
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Peter
Stutchbury’s collection of finely worked drawings,
three-dimensional sketches, cross-sectional studies
and working drawings offer insight into the
evolution of his architectural form.
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Neil Durbach’s finely made balsa maquettes offer
a hint of colour to the exhibition.
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Working
sketchbooks by Neil Durbach.
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Work by Alex
Popov. A collection of refined models are displayed
in the foreground, with panels beyond. Photographs
courtesy of Utopia Art Sydney.
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Conceptual
pencil sketches and working drawings for Miranda
Winery on one of the panels by Alex Popov.
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Laura Harding considers Process, a recent exhibition of drawings and models by
Neil Durbach, Alex Popov and Peter Stutchbury at Utopia Art Sydney.
The title Process does not seem to
adequately describe the experimental
vitality and intellectual rigour responsible
for the collection of drawings and models
recently exhibited by Neil Durbach, Alex
Popov and Peter Stutchbury at Utopia Art
Sydney. “Process” carries with it an
unfortunate connotation of procedural
determinism – evoking methods of working
that are preordained, mechanical and
unresponsive. Interpreted in this way, the
artefacts in the exhibition are defiantly
anti-procedural – revelling instead in the
delightful ambiguity and tangential
capriciousness that characterize the
beginnings of architecture.
Peter Stutchbury presented a collection of
finely worked drawings rendered in filigree
mechanical pencil lines. The inception of
each project is marked by a site study of
arresting economy. Generally comprising no
more than ten lines and softly blended
shading, they form an elegant precis of each
place, deftly encapsulating particularities in
the modelling of the landscape, the
patterning of vegetation or the sinuous
geometry of the land/water interface.
A search for clarity in structure and
tectonic infuses every subsequent drawing.
Architectural form evolves in numerous
plan studies that explore the interplay of
programmatic elements within the studied
rigour of the structural grid.
Three-dimensional sketches and
cross-sectional studies elaborate the tactile
and experiential potential of both structure
and enclosure. Finely drafted working
drawings in the computer-aided hand of
Stutchbury’s collaborators are presented
with the ubiquitous red “mark-up”,
recording a process of review that seeks to
eradicate any hint of redundancy. The most
skilfully executed projects emerge in built
form through this process of refinement
completely unfettered, exuding the
penetrating clarity and uncompromising
directness of the initial esquisse.
Alex Popov presented facsimiles of
sketches and working drawings rather than
the artefacts themselves – but even this did
not undermine the evocative strength of his
loose, thick pencil sketches. For Popov,
each project stems from seminal studies of
an architectonic module. These generative
components are not merely structural, but
have a strong spatial and formal imperative,
anticipating the definition and
proportioning of rooms, patterns of usage
and circulation, the transmission and
rendering of light and methods of
occupying a site. Plans begin as ideograms
of dots and lines that codify the
arrangement of modules and are developed
into highly refined spatial sequences of
rooms and courtyards, articulated by the
rhythmic cadence of their structural bays.
Meticulous models are used for precise
testing of proportion, alignment and
junction rather than formal exploration.
Form is explored at the scale of the
elemental components and manifest in their
aggregation and disposition on each site.
Intriguingly, the drawings of his most
recent project suggest a shift in working
method. The proposal for the Miranda
Winery in Victoria is primarily driven by
an intuitive response to site and form,
rather than a pervading tectonic module.
The scheme has developed from a series
of impressionistic studies of the profile of
tobacco sheds in the King Valley landscape,
neatly recorded by Popov as “Ned Kelly
country – mask meets San Gimignano!” The lively drawings of this project betray
a strong interest in form – low-profile
pavilions skim the ground plane within an
armature of sculpted berms and are topped
with a series of jaunty lanterns that evoke
the picturesque verticality of the sheds.
A playful cast of cartoon wine-tasters
inhabit the rooms beneath the lanterns,
fervently raising their glasses into the light
to assess the clarity and colour of the
Miranda red varietals.
Neil Durbach presented a series of
working sketchbooks that offered a highly
personal and rich assemblage of musings,
observations and speculation. Durbach’s
drawings are restlessly kinetic. They are
worked in waxy coloured leads, fountain
pen, ethereal watercolours, biro – whatever
is at hand. The effortless pliancy of the
practice’s geometry is honed in scores of
tiny three-dimensional sketches; detailed
planning issues are wrestled with in
densely worked diagrams littered with
dimensions; Commonwealth Place is
whimsically depicted beneath a five dollar
note, using its fine etching as an impromptu
site elevation. Just when you discern the
thread of a project or semblance of method
the page erupts, morphing from plan to
axonometric, into elevation or section, an
alternate project or observational studies of
precedents, objects, cartoon characters and
human figures. Beautifully drawn studies
of faces, folded legs and feet routinely take
possession of the page, oblivious to its
boundaries and the drawings beneath.
The sketchbooks are accompanied by a
collection of exquisite balsa maquettes.
Myriad mutations of recognizable Durbach
Block projects are presented, painted in
vibrant colours as if to induce a momentary
stasis, enabling critique and assessment.
They have a beguiling and infectious energy
– you begin to suspect that they are
mischievously rearranging themselves on
the shelf and transforming into alternative
projects each time you turn your back.
Durbach’s drawings and models are
compelling in the way that they allude to
process by displaying only its vestiges.
They highlight the role of exhaustive,
critical intellectual questioning and
interrogation in the search for an
architectural project. On one of the
sketchbooks, in tiny scrawled print,
Durbach has recorded an aphorism
attributed to Picasso – “To search means
nothing in painting. To find is the thing.” The experiential power of House Holman,
the Canopy Apartments or the Deepwater
Woolshed make it difficult to dispute this as
an equally valid observation of architecture.
Durbach, Popov and Stutchbury certainly
don’t seek to fetishize process or prioritize
the search. The extraordinary depth of their
visceral drawing and model-making simply
remind us that architecture cannot exist
without it.
LAURA HARDING IS AN ARCHITECT WITH
HILL THALIS ARCHITECTURE + URBAN PROJECTS.
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