Oriel
A bay projecting from the wall face, carried on corbels — daylight from three sides and a statement of status.
sketch · model in preparation
Catalogue
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
historical
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historical
historical
historical
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historical
historical
contemporary
contemporary
contemporary
contemporary
Elements & objects
Two shelves of the same cabinet. Elements are the vocabulary of building — a gothic portal and a curtain wall belong to one language, centuries apart. Objects are authentic buildings and structures documented in the field. Every card starts as a sketch; models and photographs arrive in layers, at the studio's own pace.
Elements
historical · contemporaryPortal
The ornamented frame of an entrance; in Gothic — pointed, with stepped jambs and moulded archivolts.
sketch · model in preparationArcade
A rhythm of arches carried on columns or piers — structure repeating itself into space; shelter, street and façade in one gesture.
sketch · model in preparationArcaded cloister
A covered walk of arcades wrapped around a courtyard — the arcade folded into a square, turning circulation into contemplation.
sketch · model in preparationPier
The workhorse of masonry — a massive vertical stem gathering arches, ribs and walls; in Gothic, a bundle of shafts, each answering one rib above.
sketch · model in preparationColumn
The classical order distilled — base, fluted shaft and capital in strict proportion; its gentle swelling, the entasis, bends so the eye may see straight.
sketch · model in preparationPilaster
A column remembered by the wall — base, shaft and capital flattened to a few centimetres of relief; it carries little, and articulates everything.
sketch · model in preparationSpire
A needle of stone or timber crowning a tower — governed by wind rather than weight, and thinning as it climbs; height built to be seen, not used.
sketch · model in preparationTower
A shaft of masonry that trades floor area for height — and thins as it climbs, each step left inside the wall becoming the shelf that carries the next floor.
sketch · model in preparationRidge turret
A slender turret astride the roof ridge — the flèche — carrying the small bell that marked the moment; the only tower without a foundation, standing on the timber truss that hands its weight out to the walls.
sketch · model in preparationCupola
A tower crown of bulb, lantern and spike — rebuilt after each fire in the taste of a new age; its soft swelling is really a polygon, a curve the carpenter bends from straight timbers laced by hoops.
sketch · model in preparationWall
The oldest element of all — barrier and support in one; in historic building the brick wall keeps a record of its making in the bond, the rhythm of headers and stretchers that a mason can read like the rings of a tree.
sketch · model in preparationPost
The carpenter's vertical — a squared timber standing in a frame rather than on its own mass; tenoned into the sill below and the plate above, steadied by angle braces. The mason carves; the carpenter joins.
sketch · model in preparationWindow
A hole punched in the wall for light — and the mason's hardest problem: the wall above must find a way down. A flat lintel carries only the triangle of masonry directly over it; a relieving arch, hidden higher, discharges the rest into the jambs.
sketch · model in preparationDoor
The moving fill of an entrance — not its frame (that is the portal) but the leaf itself. Boarded vertically and held by cross-ledges, it would droop at its free corner in time were it not for the diagonal brace, run from the hinge at the foot up to the latch at the head.
sketch · model in preparationGate
A defended passage through a town wall or castle circuit — not a single leaf (that is the door) but the whole gateway: a vaulted tunnel that can be shut from above. Its emblem is the portcullis — a grille that falls in stone grooves rather than turning on hinges.
sketch · model in preparationDouble doors
Great double doors closing a wide opening — of a gateway, a barn, a cathedral: two heavy leaves meeting at the centre. No single leaf can span the width, so it is halved into two and locked by a shared beam — a drawbar that slides into a deep socket in the wall.
sketch · model in preparationThatch
A roof cover of straw or reed, laid in courses from eaves to ridge. It keeps water out not by sealing but by pitch: down a steep slope the rain runs along the stalks and soaks in only a few centimetres — so thatch must be steep, and stays dry beneath.
sketch · model in preparationRoof
The cover of a building — its frame and skin together. What makes it last is shape: two rafters leaning together at the ridge would push the walls apart, were they not closed at the foot by a tie beam. The shut triangle is rigid — the rafters' thrust becomes tension in the tie, and the walls stand upright.
sketch · model in preparationRoof frame
The timber skeleton of a roof — not one truss but a whole row of them, linked along the ridge by purlins and braces into a rigid three-dimensional cage. A single cross-truss will not fold, but a row of them would topple like dominoes without the longitudinal braces — the wind-braces — that lock the bays on the diagonal.
sketch · model in preparationMansard roof
A roof with two slopes on each side — a steep lower and a shallow upper. The break is not ornament: the steep lower slope stands the attic walls almost upright, turning the cramped triangle of a loft into a full, habitable floor. Named for François Mansart, who made it a way to hide a storey in the roof.
sketch · model in preparationFoundation
The underground part of a building, handing the weight of its walls to the soil. It steps wider as it descends, because ground bears many times less than masonry: a broad footing shares over a wide area the pressure a narrow wall would concentrate into a few hand-widths — and it must reach below the frost line, or freezing water will lift the wall.
sketch · model in preparationStrip footing
A continuous linear foundation running beneath a whole wall — a band the wall stands on along its entire length. Besides spreading pressure onto the soil, it works as a beam lying in the ground: stiff along its length, it carries the load over a local pocket of weaker soil instead of sinking into it with the wall.
sketch · model in preparationFoundation wall
The vertical part of a foundation between footing and ground floor — masonry buried in the earth, the shell of a cellar. It carries little beyond the wall above it; its real adversary is earth pressure, which pushes horizontally and grows with depth — hence it is thicker than the wall above ground, propped by the floor at its head and the footing at its foot.
sketch · model in preparationTimber floor
The horizontal division between storeys — in historic buildings usually of timber: beams bearing in pockets in the walls, boards above them, a ceiling below. The beam works in bending: its top fibres are compressed, its bottom fibres stretched, and the layer between — the neutral axis — hardly works at all. Depth, not width, decides what it carries: twice as deep bears four times as much and sags eight times less.
sketch · model in preparationVault
A curved masonry ceiling built of wedge-shaped stones — an arch drawn out into space. In a rib vault the work is divided: the ribs take the weight and carry it down the diagonals into four points of support, while the webbing between them merely fills the field. A barrel vault demands a continuous wall along its whole length; gathering the load into four points is what let Gothic turn the wall between them into a window.
sketch · model in preparationSuspended ceiling
A ceiling plane hung on rods beneath the real structure — reed and plaster once, panels on a grid now. Alone in this catalogue it carries nothing: it hangs, and its own weight travels upward through hangers working in tension. The void it makes swallows the services — and, unwatched, will carry smoke as readily as air.
sketch · model in preparationRaised floor
A floor plane standing on pedestals above the real slab — panels resting corner by corner on short posts. The void beneath takes the services, while the panel itself stays loose: the floor can be taken up point by point and the space below reached without breaking anything. The mirror of the suspended ceiling — that one hangs and hides, this one stands and gives access; its pedestals work in compression, carrying the load down in points.
sketch · model in preparationCurtain wall
A non-loadbearing skin of mullions, transoms and glass — the façade as a hung, precise membrane.
sketch · model in preparationCantilever
A volume reaching beyond its support — structure made visible, gravity politely postponed.
sketch · model in preparationNext on the drawing board: truss, tracery, corbel, brise-soleil, space frame, pilotis…
Objects
selected photographs by the authorfirst objects — photographs in selection, coming at a later stage