Architecture Australia

Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg Bolles and Wilson

As a student of architecture in the 1970s, I remember being astonished by a set of design competition drawings with amazing atmospherics, seductive material sensibilities, and a sense of programmatic mystery and uncanny juxtapositions. The images were all the more impactful as they were the work of a student architect – an Australian studying in London at the Architectural Association: the young Peter Wilson. Here was an unmistakable talent.

The images were for Water House (1976), which remains a refreshingly provocative and alluring project. In some ways, it provides the initiating bookend to an increasingly expansive portfolio that defines the German–Australian practice that is Bolles and Wilson. I describe these drawings and design as a “bookend” not just on the basis of chronology, but also because the role of the drawing, the hand sketch, the impressionistic view, has remained ever-present in the work

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Architecture Australia

Architecture Australia2 min read
The Value Of Stillness In Architecture
As I write this, we have moved into the new year and a time of great instability, with shocking international conflict and erratic weather patterns. (The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has released data that show 2023 to be the wa
Architecture Australia13 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
Roundtable: AI And The Discipline Of Architecture
AI and technology Is generative AI (GAI) likely to impact the form of architecture? Mario Carpo contextualized GAI by describing how the modernist style developed from technological innovations in materials and their industrialized processes of fabr
Architecture Australia6 min read
Powerhouse Castle Hill Lahznimmo Architects
A grid of 12 square photographs shows a eucalyptus plantation: in some, the leaf-covered ground is at close range; others capture the ordered rhythm of the tamed trees; and others reveal the foliage canopy against the sky. In a further series, two la

Related