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The Upper Drawing Office

The Upper Drawing Office Vol. 82/33

This drawing, made in 1825, shows a section through the back part of the Museum where Soane’s pupils worked. The areas left white show the Upper Drawing Office, and the office door they used (see also The Little Study). The Office is supported on columns above the area known as the Colonnade which connects the Dome, where you can look down to the sarcophagus, with the Museum Corridor from where the staircase leads to the Office. Light came down in the Office from two skylights above the benches and the walls were hung with plaster casts to instruct and inspire the pupils.

The Little Study

The Little Study P86 (detail)

This little room was where Soane would sit and work at the surprisingly small table which pulled out from under the desk as you can see. Here he would produce the kind of drawings which would be worked up by the pupils (like Original Sketch Design: Tyringham Gateway). He would also be able to keep an eye on who was coming and going in the back part of the house. In front of the window are blinds like modern Venetian ones but vertical so that Soane would adjust the light to have it just how he wanted it. Between the Little Study and the area below the Upper Drawing Office is the Dressing Room where he would tidy himself up and put on his wig and coat before meeting builders who, like the pupils, would use the office door at the back of the house. This is a detail from a drawing of 1822.

Public and Private Buildings

Public and Private Buildings P87

Here is a drawing showing all Soane’s buildings built between 1808 and 1815, drawn by Joseph Michael Gandy – Soane’s best draughtsman – in 1820. Look at how cleverly all the buildings are shown as if they are in a huge room. Some are shown as big models and some as pictures within the picture. Imagine how much work went into drawing them all, let alone designing them.

Quill Pen

Quill pen

In Soane’s time, some pens were made from feathers, also called quills. The best quills come from geese; the feathers used are those from the leading edge of the wings. They were sometimes dried and hardened in hot sand and they were shaped with a sharp knife – a pen knife – to form a nib. This could be fine or broad as required.

Metal pens were also starting to be used in Soane’s time and would be used for finer work.  Soane’s Tyringham Gateway sketch was probably made with a quill pen like this one.

View of the South Exhibition Gallery

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Adjoining Rooms

Adjoining Rooms 1989
Wood, glass, acrylic sheet, AC lacquer
Installation: 78 x 426 x 62 cm; three items: 78 x 142 x 62 cm (each)
Tate, London

Like the chair sculptures Conversation Seat (1986), Interlocking Chairs (1995) and Burnt Interlocking Chairs (1997), this work shows us how discrete components, in this case individual vitrines, combine into one work. It also expresses a Soanean mode of creating space: Soane did not create discrete rooms, but rather created a series of interlocking spaces, as in the Library-Dining Room and the Dome-Colonnade.

Marseille, Cité Radieuse

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Marseille, Cité Radieuse 2001
Wood, aluminium, glass, lacquer
102 x 200 x 10 cm
Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton

This work depicts the Unite d’habitation, a modernist residential housing principle developed by the architect Le Corbusier. He built these throughout Europe, the most famous of which is in Marseille.

Council of Europe

Photo: Prudence Cummings Associates

Council of Europe 1989
Wood, glass, paint, AC lacquer
60 x 60 x 15 cm
The artists

This work, which depicts the Council of Europe, is part of a larger series of works that explores the common European political and cultural heritage. Other sculptures include the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Security Council, and the European Parliament. It was made at the moment when the European Economic Community was turning into the European Union.

Apple, Sunny Vale

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Apple, Sunnyvale 2018
MDF, paper, card, paint, acrylic
91 x 91 x 7.5 cm
The artists

This work depicts the Apple campus in Sunnyvale, California, located in Silicon Valley.

Apple, Cupertino

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Apple, Cupertino 2018
MDF, paper, card, paint, acrylic
91 x 91 x 7.5 cm
The artists

This work depicts the corporate headquarters of Apple, also called Apple Park, which was completed by Norman Foster in 2017. Both Apple works show how tech companies are the new patrons of architecture.

Apple Oblique (green)

Apple Oblique (green) 2015
Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 310 gsm
75 x 75 cm
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

This print depicts the Cupertino headquarters of Apple.

Nvidia, Santa Clara (orange)

Nvidia, Santa Clara (orange) 2015
Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 310 gsm
75 x 75 cm
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

This print depicts the corporate headquarters of Nvidia, a technology company that designs graphics processing units for the gaming and professional markets. Since 2014 they have also focused on artificial intelligence.

Logo Works (x4)

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Logo Works (x4) 1998–99
4 screen prints on Somerset Satin 300 gsm
70 x 70 cm (each)
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

These works depict banks and corporate headquarters towers, such as Deutsche Bank, BMW, IBM, Unilever. Each tower dominates the landscape in its city, playing a key role in each company’s public image strategy and functioning like a super logo that communicates a company’s identity.

Elevation: The Pantheon

Elevation: The Pantheon 45/3/54

There are basically four kinds of drawings which can be made to show buildings. An elevation like this one of the Pantheon in Rome (the best preserved ancient Roman building in the world, built in the early 2nd century AD) shows the outside of the building as if you were looking straight at it: this one is of the front of the Pantheon showing the shape of the dome over the huge central space and the porch, called a portico, supported on columns.

Plan: The Pantheon

Plan: The Pantheon 45/3/52

A plan, like this one of the Pantheon, shows the layout of the building seen from above as if the building were only built to just above ground level. You can see the huge round space in the centre of the building and the arrangement of the columns of the portico.

Section: The Pantheon

Section: The Pantheon 45/3/53

This is a section of the Pantheon which shows a slice through the building as if it were a cake cut in half. It shows the height of spaces inside the building and how they are arranged. Note how carefully the shadows are drawn to give a real feeling of how the dome curves. The walls which have been cut through are coloured in pink – a colour which was often used in this way by architects. These drawings of the Pantheon were made in Rome in 1778 when Soane was a student.

Perspective: Pitzhanger Manor

Perspective: Pitzhanger Manor Vol. 90/5

This is a perspective of Soane’s own country house, Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, built from 1800 onwards. It shows how the building would look if you were really standing in front of it. Perspectives are probably the most difficult to draw as you have to work out the way the building will appear before it is actually built – but there are ways to do this using the plans, elevations and sections.

This is the original drawing for plate V in Soane’s book Plans, Elevations and Perspective Views of Pitzhanger Manor-House. There are other sorts of drawings, elevations, plans and sections in the book as well.

Bird’s-Eye View: Pitzhanger Manor

Perspective: Pitzhanger Manor Vol. 90/5

A bird’s-eye view is a very clever kind of drawing, which shows a building as it would look from the air, as a bird flying over the building would see it – hence the name. This drawing is also of Pitzhanger Manor and shows the arch over the entrance from the road, the gardens and an artificial ruin Soane built to the right of the house.

He would pretend that these were real Roman ruins and even made drawings showing how they would have looked when complete.

The whole thing was probably a sort of joke he liked to play on his visitors and friends. Unfortunately, although the house is still there, the ruins were removed after Soane sold the property. In Soane’s time artificial ruins like this one were built in gardens to remind people of those they had seen in Italy.

Floor Plan with Laid-Out Wall Elevations: Lady Williams Wynne’s Room, St James’s Square

Floor Plan with Laid-Out Wall Elevations: Lady Williams Wynne’s Room, St James’s Square Adam Vol. 40/70

Another kind of drawing is the floor plan with laid-out wall elevations. It is a combination of a plan for a single room with the internal elevations of the walls shown, as if it were a box with the walls flattened open. Sometimes the ceiling would also be shown on this kind of drawing.

This sort of drawing is easy for the client to understand and cheaper than a model. This is a drawing by Robert Adam’s office for Lady Williams Wynne’s room in a house in St James’s Square in London, and was drawn in about 1772. Robert Adam was a famous architect who had a big office in London, and was older than Soane. After the Adam office closed, Soane bought many of the Adam drawings to add to his collection.