Various media
LOGO ONIRO, 2014
For the Itinerant School of Architecture (open to all interested) proposed to a few colleagues in Italy as an activity which might meet a niche demand from overseas clients.
SPINE GRAPHICS, 2012
Coll. : ES, Paris.
COLOURED PAPER COLLAGE, 2008
If Henri MATISSE resorted in later years to cutting shapes with scissors from coloured paper it’s because he had found an efficient technique.
Cheaper & quicker than paint, and more homogenous in its surface, I first applied it to a fire-place in Nice, which needed “lifting”.
A word of warning : paper mites thrive on it such Ph-neutral substances.
PARTY INVITATION, 2008
(With grateful acknowledgements to the OED.)
DONKEYS, HYDRA, 2006
The immobility of these creatures, stationed in front of the quay-side café where we were enjoying breakfast, proved irresistible.
SHUTTER FIXINGS, 2005
Having dry-stripped a pair of 19th century oak window frames (40 hours apiece) I made interior shutters from light-weight ply.
The crémone handle (inspiration, incidentally, for the mechanism of GIRTH un tavolo per gente di spessore) penetrates the shutter and is gripped by this simple cut-out clip.
VITAL STRUGGLE, circa 2005
Graphic exercise in soft pencil : how to express what the French call faire vivre.
CAMBODIAN UTENSILES, 1995
On the back of a ticket I sketched these items in front of a Khmer waiter in Mougins, who exclaimed “I so miss that !” referring to the sugar-palm cakes that are made from the bamboo recipient on the right.
COLLAGE AS DESIGN TOOL, 1991
When preparing designs for the MOLTENI funerary chapel in Giussano, I was encouraged to make photocopies of canonical architectural elements. That mock-up later hung in the SDA conference room at Santa Maria della Porta 9.
Which is where I applied the same technique to gain time in studying the proportions of the drum superstructure to the National Museum of Scotland project for Edinburgh.
VENEZIA ANALOGA, 1981
Finding myself at SDA with no more work to shift, I asked Aldo ROSSI what he would like me to do.
Go to the flicks ! Do a drawing ! was his laconic response.
This is what I produced, and which as collage backdrop served AR well, exploited for at least 8 years.
PERSPECTIVE MODEL, 1978
In the second year of Architecture school I devised (lying in bed one Sunday morning, thinking the matter through logically) my own system for constructing perspectives, in view of a forthcoming presentation.
Then, mindful of BRAMANTE’s trompe l’ oeil that I had seen in Milan some years before, I set about projecting a perspective drawing into genuinely three dimensional space of a certain physical depth.
To check my hypothesis, I made this model.
THE HERESY, 1973
Something bugged me about Frank LLOYD WRIGHT’s architecture, which I had seen on a spring holiday family tour of the United States.
This painting, using only a palette-knife, derived from that preoccupation.
SLABWARE DISH, 1973
From the negative cut out of the four sides destined for a slab-ware vase, I hit on the idea of producing this dish, staggering slightly the layers.
I discovered some years ago that in East Germany many people made their garden gates from the residual negatives of steel steel die stamps.
A similar merz construction, from slab-ware leftovers.
POLISHED STONE FASHION ACCESSORIES, 1972
Collecting stones from loch-side beaches over holiday weekends in Argyll lead to drum-polishing them & epoxy-glueing them to kit supplies.
Coll. : VGS, Grasse.
opus incertum 