SOCKS

Kon Wajiro’s Archaeology of Present Times

Japanese architect, sociologist, and educator Kon Wajiro was living in Tokyo when the violent 1923 earthquake occurred. With his students, he visited the areas where people gathered after the natural disaster. Through simple yet refined drawings he began to register the temporary shelters and the sparse belongings of the refugees in order to testify their … Read More

Ben Shahn, Untitled Drawing Series, (1948)

During the twentieth century’s Great Migration, the Hickmans were one among many African Americans families looking for affordable housing in Chicago. They were fleeing the sharecropping system of the rural South looking for the jobs, education and freedom promised by the industrialized North. Yet, what they found, was scarcity of housing, segregation and tragedy. In … Read More

The One-Room Apartment by Cornelius Meyer (1689)

Cornelis Meijer (Cornelius Meyer) (1629-1701) was a Dutch hydraulics engineer that came to Rome in 1680 to assist in the design of the banks of the Tiber river, the diverting of the water and the draining of the Pontine marshes. His two-volumes book Nuovi ritrovamenti (1689), (available in pdf online from the ETH Rara page) is … Read More

An Immaterial Drawing in Space: Alberto Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 a.m. (1933)

A 1933 sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m. relates to “a period of six months passed in the presence of a woman who, concentrating all life in herself, transported my every moment into a state of enchantment. We constructed a fantastical palace in the night—a very fragile palace of matches. At the least false movement … Read More

Aurélien Débat, Horizon Lines (2014-15)

French illustrator Aurélien Débat has already been featured in Socks with his “Imaginary City of Tamponville“. The work shown here (titled: Lignes d’horizon) is an experiment with lines and textures, depicting sea landscapes. The project came into life as a small publication of 20 pages containing drawings realized in 2014 at Villa la Brugère in Normandy and in Marseille in … Read More

Max Bill’s Exhibition pavilion of the City of Ulm at the National Exhibition of Baden/Württemberg – Stuttgart, Germany (1955)

In 1955 the city of Ulm commissioned architect Max Bill, Rector of the Ulm University of Design, to plan and execute a pavilion for the Baden/Württemberg Exhibition to be held in Stuttgart. The program for the small architecture was to show the city of Ulm to the visitors as in a view from the tower … Read More

Alvin Boyarsky, Chicago à la carte, The City as an Energy System (1968)

This post introduces a series of heterogeneous articles on Chicago, the city and its architecture: sparse attempts to convey different looks at the city from within and outside the boundaries of the discipline. Canadian architect and educator Alvin Boyarsky, director of the Architectural Association school in London from 1971 until his death in … Read More

Depicting Process through Forms: Works by Anton Stankowski (1906 – 1998)

German graphic designer and painter Anton Stankowski (1906 – 1998) worked on the possibility of describing actions and forces through abstract compositions. Far from the depiction of physical properties, his visual research did not aim at depicting physical properties, but at giving shape to the forces acting behind intangible scientific processes and societal relationships. The … Read More