Alternative Histories
Jantje Engels, Marius Grootveld (Curators); Thomas Adank, Guus Kaandorp (Photographers)
Drawing Matter, 2019

Paperback | 9-1/4 x 11-3/4 inches | 204 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1916152205 | £26.00

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
Acknowledging that architecture is a corpus of inherited ideas, Alternative Histories began with a question: could a contemporary architect, with their own references, make a model that would respond to a drawing from the past" This book collects the 85 models produced by the same number of practices alongside the architectural drawings that prompted them, all of which are held in the UK-based archive of Drawing Matter. Taken as a whole, the responses challenge the facile understanding of concepts of reference, history or influence as drivers of contemporary architectural thinking. From methods to materials, the project opens up not only new ways of looking at the past, but also a series of conversations about how architects today shape their present. dDAB COMMENTARY:
On March 23, 2019, Alternative Histories opened at the Architecture Foundation in London, with 85 architectural models by the same number of practices from the UK and Europe. That was one year after two architects from Ghent, Jantje Engels and Marius Grootveld, visited the Somerset archive of Drawing Matter, which has amassed more than 7,000 architectural drawings over the last quarter century, to select 85 drawings that the solicited architects would h...