Re-vision of the Drawn Heritage of Alison and Peter Smithson: Make and Remake = Innovate…

Abstract

This paper seeks to show an interpretation of the drawings done by Alison and Peter Smithson to organize and present the exhibition “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”, in order to evaluate how the graphic resources used in the project are a reflection of a concrete ideology in facing his work and how it is based on understanding the architectural space from its adaptation to human activity, and in this case, from the more feminine approach of Alison Smithson.

The diversity of the Smithsons architectural work is widely documented and disseminated by numerous writings and audiovisuals of the authors themselves in addition; it has been studied through an extensive bibliography. However, from our point of view there are still facets of their way of representating architecture that arouse a certain curiosity such as the relationship between the visual resources used and the architecture they conceived.

The research focuses on offering a personal perspective of the archived graphic heritage of the project, focused on its illustrated plan drawings and synthesis diagrams. This exploration manages to identify a series of graphic techniques that show the innovative intention that guided this Project.

1 Introduction

“Our intention has always been –conscientiously since the Doorn Manifiesto in 1954- to turn architecture towards particularity… of place, person, activity: the form to arise from these.

That is why there has been so much effort…projects, histories, novels, films, essays, furniture, exhibitions.” [1].

The term heritage, which comes from Latin means “what is received by the father’s line”, located in the discipline of architectural representation, the first reading suggests inheritance of drawings or documents done by recognized authors that imply a record of deep theoretical reflections. The outstanding work of Alison and Peter Smithson in the field of architecture and urbanism has left a rich graphic legacy, as a result of their intense professional and teaching activity in the world of avant-garde culture from the mid-twentieth century. The continuous self-critical and reflective nature of their work, deliberately disseminated, sometimes reappeared intentionally reverting to the new particularity of the project.

A significant particularity of the Smithsons’ work is their link to the art world. Its participation in Independent Group is remarkable, where together with a group of young artists and critics, in the 1950s; they organized actions to make art more inclusive, as a challenge to face the dominant elitist culture of that time. All types of human activities were the object of their attention and they assumed an anthropological definition of culture [2]. In this sense, it seems highly appealing to go into their way of doing through a project related to the art world (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Works of some Independent Group members. Left: Henderson, N. Head of Man. London. 1956. Source: Tate Gallery. Right: Paolozzi, E. Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (‘The Artist as Hephaestus’). London. 1987. Source: National Portrait Gallery. London

Fig. 2.

Image of the working table in the Special Collections of the Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design, with original project materials by Alison and Peter Smithson and the exhibition catalog [4]. Own source

With resources from the “Special Collections” of the Frances Loeb Library Harvard Graduate School of Design, we have based our work of Smithsons original documents [3]. When examining the documents, we were struck by the uniqueness of the drawings done by hand in Chinese ink from the project for the exhibition “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”, made by Alison Smithson.

After verifying that it had not been investigated it, we thought it might be of interest to reflect on this heritage, so carefully inventoried, and that allow gathering various documents and drawings, looking at them carefully, as well as finding connections with which to advance in the knowledge of their work on graphic representation. Their particular way of “making”, “remaking” will lead to confirm the innovative intention that guided the project.

In 1962, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation proposed to organize an exhibition whose objective was to show the art of the last ten years, in a sample unprecedented at the time, both for quality and extension, and for the international character of its selection. A totality of 354 works by some 161 different artists including paintings and sculptures were shown; coming from both workshops of the artists themselves, such as private collections or different museums, not only from Europe but also from the United States. The exhibition brought together, among others, the work of “old masters” such as Picasso, Braque, Léger or Lipchitz, or the young Tàpies, Pollock, Hockney, Oldenburg, Chillida, or Tinguely. The innovative nature of all of them reflected in some way the establishment of certain permissive and reflective attitudes towards these new forms, already recognized by a growing number of people, and from different countries [4].

The project occupied several spaces of the neoclassical building known as the National Gallery of British Art, where the Tate exhibited both its modern and classic collections. Alison and Peter Smithson intention was focused on the study of the spaces transformation that on the one hand enhanced the dialogue between the works, and that on the other hand prevented their intervention from losing prominence against the imposing architecture of the hall, with the presence of the orders of the repetitive pairs of columns or the spectacular vaults of the galleries. In this line, the monumental main entrance to the building, located on the axis of the façade with its staircases, entablature and Ionic colonnade was disabled, and it was preferred to organize the access to the exhibition at one of the edges.

“Our intention was to present the works in such a way as to clarify the relationships that governed their selections. The paintings and sculptures were only meant to speak. No presentation tricks were used, and none of the Tate detailed architecture was allowed to obstruct.” [5].

Therefore, they devised the exhibition transforming the Tate spaces with a montage that the authors called “milky way”. The artworks were presented on spectacularly illuminated white screens to thereby achieve great contrast effects with the darkness of the existing building roofs, in that way they visually blurred the historical architecture.

2 Materials from the Archive

2.1 Drawings

The project is inventoried in the folder “DES, 2003, 0001, 009455761, J000, Volume: J135”. When we open it, we find eight hand-drawn drawings made in Chinese ink on tracing paper at different scales, which include distribution plans, diagrams and a green-hatched transparency [3].

We will examine the set of plans drawn up at 1/16 scale that illustrate different aspects of the architectural process of the project, all of them drawings in plan. The interest of this series of drawings lies in the artisan character that reveals and suggests a detailed involvement of the architects in the peculiarity of the work. It is likely that they practiced freehand drawing of the plan as an integral action that would help them become more familiar with the artworks to be included in their project, also made with their hands.

Focusing on the drawing “Detailed layout dwg nº T6400” (Fig. 3), at a first glance, the absence of the existing architecture is surprising. It is possible to think that the Smithsons deliberately omitted it to underline the particularity of their project: that suit tailored to the works to be presented, in which the conformation of each of their folds would be given by the needs of space to view them and which would later be adjusted to the Tate geometry.

Fig. 3.

Source: [3]

Alison and Peter Smithson. “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964” “Detailed layout” dwg nº T6400. Chinese ink drawing on tracing paper. Dimensions 35 × 60 cm. London. 1964.

During the process, they investigated in detail the space needs of the individual paintings and sculptures, as well as the possibilities of groupings, paying special attention to the visitor movements and visuals. Peter Smithson explained in a lecture that [6]: “the articulation of the plan is based on the works” also stressed, “it follows the shape of the spaces, which is guided by the nature of the artwork.” The formal result is a kind of labyrinth with dilations of diverse geometry that organize groupings of the works in a total of 24 subsections, and which in allows you to explore the entire exhibition through various alternative routes.

In the study process, which took them a year and a half, they worked from photographic miniatures of each of the works. With all this, they created a pattern of spaces consistent with their main intention: to serve those particularities that concerned them related to the experiences and emotions of the visitors.

Another aspect to note is the graphic strategy used to indicate the groupings of the works. On the one hand, handwritten lettering carefully designed with a “flexible” character that adapts to the new geometry and follows the entire exposure perimeter. It is accompanied by “flexible” arrows, graphic resource that facilitates the understanding of the different groups and that helps raise the hypothetical visual relationships with visitors. If you look closer at the drawing, you can see some “stars” that link to the idea of the “milky way” discussed above. This observation leads us to deduce that the Smithsons made a previous assessment of the works/artists and awarded three categories: those of a star, those of two stars, and those that had not been awarded any stars. In the first category we find, among others, Picasso, Braque, Lèger, Albers, Matisse, Morandi, Avery, Moore or Miró. In the second we find Bacon, Dubuffet, Jorn, Vasarelly, Koonig or Rothko. Younger or then emerging artists such as Tàpies, Paolozzi, or Pollock are not accompanied by the aforementioned “bright” badges.

The strategy of the “galaxy” elaboration proposed by Smithson seems to have the intention to concentrate the most luminous work, which is that of the “old masters” in the area of the main entrance as the basis of the exhibition. However, the artwork with different distinctions is interspersed in a timely and strategic way through the rest of the exhibition spaces, having just formed that “milky way” as a conglomerate of constellations with stars of different intensities, some already recognized and others to recognize, as an articulated set that is formed fleeing from chronological logics and thought to keep the visitor’s attention.

Peter Salter [7], explains - as a regular contributor to the Smithsons -, the care and detail of the drawings, calling them “exploratory” in which it also “includes production information”. In this sense, the rigor and intention of the drawing that invites to stop and discover their thoughts through the multiple annotations, precise situations of the works, intentions of grouping or guessing of the visitors’ movements, should be emphasized. You can also observe all kinds of comments in response to the possibilities of expansion, or incidents of the existing space: thus, for example, it includes emblematic symbols specifying in a personal way by drawing “an eye with a directional arrow” the visibility intentions of Matisse’s work from the entrance, or the visual connection of Giacometti’s sculptures. In addition to other annotations of order closer to the detail and to the human scale of the visitors, the incorporation of question marks point to possible accesses.

Special attention deserves the care in recording the written information that they incorporated into the project process, as an integrated part of the drawing itself. To facilitate this aspect, different types of stamps were prepared to stamp the drawings and thus to be able to manually marked each item of the document. Three types can be seen: the stamped heading box to complete manually the basic information of the project, the revision box in which all the changes and additions were dated on hand drawn, or the circular stamp with the brand of the office stamped with red ink in some of the plans (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.

Source: [3]

Alison and Peter Smithson. Fragment of Fig. 3 illustrating in detail the heading box. The numbering of each drawing is highlighted manually with red graphite. The acronym “A.M.S” corresponds to Alison Margaret Smithson.

Salter [7] also adds “the drawing became an active of thought processes”. In this sense, we can see that a detailed record of the various changes and implementations is included with brief descriptions, all of them with the specific indication of the day, month and year. It is followed by a need for registration derived from the intention to evolve the drawing on constant occasions. In addition, the elaborated revision box is conveniently ordered and numbered with correlative letters. It can be seen that the period in which the different actions are elaborated runs since March 1963 to January 1964, therefore it can be understood that the perimeter of the whole plane is adequately protected with a thick ribbon. It is relevant being able to appreciate the doubts and modifications carried out during the entire project process. The ease of having the original plans physically has allowed us to appreciate these changes in more detail. In this sense, it has been possible to arrange the plane of tracing paper on a dark background. In this way, the change in texture produced by erasing the ink using the classic “scratching” technique, stands out on the darkened tracing paper. It is the proof that drawings are constantly modified and evolved in search of the intended innovation (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.

Alison and Peter Smithson. “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”. Left: fragment of Fig. 3 with details of the modification recorded on date 10.2.64: “C Chillida Booth Vasarely & Rochenberg reagruped”. Right: revision box in which all changes and additions were noted. Own source

Fig. 6.

Alison and Peter Smithson. “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”. Left: fragment of the “Detailed layout dwg nº T6400” plan (Fig. 3) of subzone 21. Right: fragment of the general plan (Fig. 7). It is observed that Miró’s work is marked with a star, and maintains the same position, instead, Calder’s work has shifted. (fragments reproduced in real scale). Own source

In front of the plan drawing with all the process details (Fig. 3), we find another general plan (Fig. 7), also hand drawn on the same scale but, in this case, without registration data. Presumably it would have been a redrawing with the final set of alterations made after construction, in which the variations that had occurred in the execution process were implemented, as an “as built” drawing. It is also freehand drawing, with all the information of the artworks and probably “it was taken very seriously, requiring days to be spent remeasuring parts” [7] of the grouping of exhibit spaces. This plan incorporates as well a drawing in its upper right, with the anagram of the exhibition. This design will be presented on the cover of the exhibition catalogue (Fig. 2) [4]. In addition, the map is proudly stamped in red with the circular seal from the Smithson’s studio, which is a leading part in the composition of the drawing.

Fig. 7.

Source: [3]

Alison and Peter Smithson. “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”, General Plant. Chinese ink drawing on tracing paper. Dimensions 35 × 60 cm. London. 1964.

It is interesting to compare “twin” fragments of one plan (Fig. 3) and the other (Fig. 7), as the evolution process can be observed by close views. Peter Smithson explained in the Climate Register conference [6] that there is a high percentage of work carried out in situ in exhibition assemblies, an issue that can be verified by carefully visualizing both drawings (Fig. 6).

Another noteworthy aspect is the way to graph the accesses to the exhibition with emblematic symbols: the drawing of as multiple concentrated arrows at the entrance and exit probably register the multitude of visitors that presumably would be at the beginning, and would stop at the exit to comment the exhibition (Fig. 7).

Peter Smithson offered several clues about the importance of exhibitions in the exercise of good practices, considering it as an opportunity to experience 1:1 scale aspects of interest that could be exportable to projects. To support this concept, he provided some examples of the three generations of architects of the modern movement, which he considered remarkable because, as he claimed, his emerging ideas proved in a real space and with ephemeral materials [8].

2.2 Diagrams

The curiosity of finding some diagram plans dated in 1995, after the project, leads us to research more about their work to find some clue. Unglaub and Spellman [9] state that the Smithsons had a particular way of incorporating the diagrams in support of the projects, and added that “they were a new contribution to the discipline of architectural representation.” Diagrams showing interconnections and combinations of connected networks, which demonstrated a particular way of thinking. Peter Smithson [10] visualized the foundations of his work in an ideogram that appeared in Team X First:

“(The) net of human relations (is) a constellation with different values of diferent parts in an immensely complicated web crossing and recrossing. Brubeck!”

It seemed suggestive to gather all the diagrams of the project, as well as to overlap all of them with the general plan. The first could be the different layers or configuration lines; the overlay could be understood as a complete ideogram of the project (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.

From left to right: 1) Alison and Peter Smithson. “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”. Groups of works. NGD 1995. Source: [3]. 2) Alison and Peter Smithson. “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”. Visitor movements. NGD 2005. Source: [3]. 3, 4) Superposition of 1 and 2 with the general plan (assembly traced by the authors of the communication). 4) Peter Smithson, 1962. Play Brubeck. Published in the Team X Primer manual with the following note from Alison Smithson: “Brubeck: Ideogram of a human relations network. A constellation of parts of different value, in an immensely complicated network of lines that intersect and intertwine. Brubeck! From here a plot can arise.”

Together with the diagrams there is a transparency made with a green hatch inserted into an acetate base, also dated in 1995, years after the exhibition was held, as well as a paper copy reproduced in black and white of that time. In the adventure of investigating the subject, we discovered that in the aforementioned lecture [6], a slide with green holograms was shown, and was illustrative of the perception of used paths or ways in the access spaces to the classrooms of the Architecture School of the University of Bath that had been built 6 years before. In the speech Peter Smithson would point out that the way of thinking to obtain the form of the Bath corridors focused on the practice to design the form based on the groupings in the exhibition of the Tate Gallery. Consciously or unconsciously the Smithsons had practiced in the creative process of the exhibition, a way of projecting that they would practice years later moved into a different state, in other words, innovating. In his comments on Bath’s hologram, he focuses not only on the expected behaviors of future users, but also on their current use, the forecast of the activities to be developed. In addition, it coincides that it also intervened in an existing building, such as the Tate project (Fig. 9). Looking for their writings, we find more thoughts on it in “Conglomerate ordering. Restating the Possible” [8], as a way to approach to the project by establishing complex relationships at different levels, always with the idea of focusing on the main purpose, which were the experiences in the projected architectural space. The innovative concept of the conglomerate order, according to Millán-Gómez, was introduced by Peter Smithson in 1986 in the ILAUD workshop in Urbino [11], an occasional continuation of the theoretical debates of the influential CIAM or Team X.

Fig. 9.

Left: Alison and Peter Smithson, 1984–1988 Building 6 east, University of Bath. Level 2 floor. Center: Holograms Building 6 east, University of Bath, presented by P.S. at the conference [6]. Source: Architectural Association. Right: “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954–1964”. Transparency with green trimmed adhesive pattern and 4 anchor points drawn in Chinese ink and paper copy. Overlays re-assembled by the authors of the communication. Own source.

3 Conclusion

To conclude, an aspect to highlight is that the Smithsons took especially care of the authorship of each of the project documents. In the publication of their complete works [12], they specify that each drawing, diagram or photograph was properly dated and attributed to the person who had produced it, but not to its evolution, which was always the responsibility of Alison or Peter Smithson.

Although one could already intuit for the delicacy and sensitivity of each one of them, curiously all the drawings of the project that concerns us, have been drawn by female hands: on the one hand, the illustrated floor drawings of the project bear the acronym of AMS, 1963 (Alison Margaret Smithson), and on the other hand, the synthesis diagrams of the architectural spaces, drawn after three decades of ending the exhibition, in this case by NGD, 1995 (Nuria García de Dueñas). It was not difficult to intuit the feminine approach in the elaboration of these careful documents.

To close this interpretation of the graphic work of the exhibition, it seems appropriate to quote a final note by Peter Smithson in the publication “The charged void”, which confirms that his “make-draw-think”, along with a continuous effort “remake-redraw-rethink”, has resulted in the constant discovery of innovative concepts. This is an interesting material as an example of significant graphic heritage for an innovation teaching in architecture [12] (Fig. 10):

Fig. 10.

Source: ETSAB UPC Graphic archive

Alison Smithson and Enric Miralles at the UPC School of Architecture, in the framework of the “Upper Lawn” workshop (1986).

“The follow-up drawings, to explain better or further evolve an unbuilt project, can sometimes be dated forty years after the project’s initiation”