Wacław Szpakowski was a Polish architect, engineer and artist. Starting at seventeen years old and throughout his whole life, he developed a series of … [Read more...]
The Theatre as Machine: Joseph Furttenbach Stage Design
Joseph Furttenbach (1591 – 1667) was a German architect, engineer and architecture theorist who lived in Italy from 1610 to 1620. During his stay … [Read more...]
Axonometric Realism: “Hortus Conclusus” by Beate Gütschow (2019)
Beate Gütschow is a German contemporary artist who works primarily through photography. In her work, she analyses the complex and ever-changing … [Read more...]
A Visual Thinking Strategy: Oswald Mathias Ungers, Morphologie: City Metaphors (1982)
German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926–2007) accompanied his life-long architectural and theoretical production with a parallel work on found … [Read more...]
Symbolic Truth: Geometric Portraits by Indigenous Populations from Brazil.
Founded by Lina Bo and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi in 1950, the Brazilian magazine Habitat ("The magazine of the arts in Brazil") manifested a … [Read more...]
Inner Space (The Book)
We present Inner Space, an essay we have written in connection to the curatorship of the homonymous exhibition at the 2019 Lisbon … [Read more...]
The Underlying Structure of Letters: Luca Pacioli’s Alphabet from De Divina Proportione (1509)
Franciscan friar and mathematician Luca Pacioli wrote several books on mathematics and geometry. Among them, in 1497, Pacioli conceived De Divina … [Read more...]
Gareth Damian Martin, Postcards from The Continuous City, 2018
The Continuous City is an in-progress photographic series by Gareth Damian Martin. The British artist, game designer and writer explores video game … [Read more...]
The Shape of Knowledge: The Mundaneum by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine
Mankind is at a turning point in its history. The mass of data acquired is astounding. We need new instruments to simplify it, to condense it, or … [Read more...]
The Charterhouse of Padua, a Forgotten Place, (Marco Lumini and Alberto Michielotto)
We usually don’t accept text contributions for SOCKS, but we made an exception for this article on the Charterhouse in Padua, Italy featuring original … [Read more...]
The Abstract Textures of the Aurelian Walls. Photographs by Giampiero Sanguigni (2019)
The Aurelian walls have marked the line of defense of Rome for 16 centuries, from their construction (270 to 275 AD), until September 20, 1870, when … [Read more...]
(Review) Éric Alonzo, The Architecture of the Road, History and Theories (2018)
L’architecture de la voie. Histoire et Théories (“The Architecture of the Road, History and Theories”) is the bold title of a French volume that Éric … [Read more...]
Spatializing Knowledge: Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Memory (1519-1544)
Giulio Camillo Delminio (1480-1544) was an Italian Renaissance polymath. His most famous project, started in ca.1519 and carried on until his death, … [Read more...]
The Aesthetics of Taxonomy: Hokusai’s Manga (1814-1878)
Starting in 1814, when he was already 55, Japanese artist Hokusai Katsushika published over 4000 small drawings on extremely varied subjects. The 15 … [Read more...]
Abstract Layers of Territory: Maps by David Lemm
David Lemm is a visual artist and designer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His production ranges widely from illustrations to collages, multi-media … [Read more...]
Clusters and Growth: PREVI Housing Project by James Stirling (1976)
PREVI (Proyecto experimental de vivienda), (Experimental Housing Project), was a strategic low-cost project for experimental mass housing in Peru, … [Read more...]
The Thersilion in Megalopolis, Greece (370 BCE)
The Greek city of Megalopolis was founded between 371 and 368 BC in order to provide a counterweight to the power of Sparta and shortly belonged … [Read more...]
Luigi Moretti’s Structures and Sequences of Spaces (1952)
In 1952, Italian architect Luigi Moretti wrote an editorial for the 7th issue of the Italian magazine Spazio, (which he directed and designed), titled … [Read more...]
The Architecture of Cooking. Illustrations from: Urbain Dubois, La Cuisine Artistique, 1872
Urbain Dubois (1818-1901) was a French chef, an innovator of the art of the cuisine and a prolific author. During his life, he authored a series of … [Read more...]
The Origins of The Plan: Forma Urbis Romae (between 203 and 211 CE)
The Forma Urbis Romae or Forma Urbis Severiana was a very large map of the imperial city of Rome (18 m long by 13 m high) carved on 151 marble slabs … [Read more...]
The Lenin Institute for Librarianship by Ivan Leonidov (1927)
Ivan Illich Leonidov (1902-1957) designed the Lenin Institute for Librarianship (the collective scientific and cultural center of the USSR) in 1927 as … [Read more...]
Ana Frois, Greenhouses (2015-17)
Ana Frois is a Portuguese architect and self-taught illustrator. Her drawings place together archetypal architectures with natural elements and small … [Read more...]
Fausto Melotti, Weightless Constructions (1960’s – 1980’s)
“A score of weightless ideograms like water insects that seem to whirl on a brass structure screened by gauze thread”. Italo Calvino, Gli Effimeri. … [Read more...]
When Vision becomes Space: Athanasius Kircher’s Camera Obscura (1646)
In his magnum opus on light, projections, and astronomy, Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae ("the Great Art of Light and Shadows," polymath Jesuit scholar and … [Read more...]
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