schmidt hammer lassen: Sketches

"The sketch is the most simplified way to tell a building, in its simplicity far better than words. A sketch, despite and maybe exactly because of its rough simplicity and rapid attempt, is by far the most advanced and efficient way to initiate the process of establishing an architectural object.

Asked what a given architectural project is all about, the sketches you started out with often very clearly point out the founding principles. This is also the case with the new Art Museum of Aarhus; an almost endless row of drawings repeating and renewing themselves, showing a cubic, static and closed monolith opened up by various modern attempts. A sharp-edged monumental building halfway dug into a descending ground, cut through by an organically curved vertical section, and in correspondence to this vertical section, a horizontal cut.

The sketches are all about the elementary vocabulary concerning the project; how to divide a cube, the shape of a curve, a facade carried by columns, where to put the functions and the characteristics of the site.

After the seemingly lightness of the sketches with their heavy luggage of visions of 'how it could be', sometimes one is fortunate to be allowed to pursue the project all the way to realization. Fortunately this applies for the new Art Museum of Aarhus."
schmidt hammer lassen