The second edition of the annual Architecture Drawing Prize has again shown to be a great success sheding light on the role of drawing in presenting ideas. The event culminates with an exhibition of the winning works at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, now on show through 18 November.

Sir John Soane – who owned a collection of 30,000 drawings – championed drawing as the driving force behind architecture, and built his Museum so his students and apprentices could draw his vast collection from life. The winners and runners up of the prize are displayed in the Museum’s exhibition galleries, allowing visitors to compare the drawings with those by the likes of Soane, Piranesi and Gandy.

The winner of the 2018 Architecture Drawing Prize is Li Han, one of the founding partners of Drawing Architecture Studio in Beijing. His work was chosen by the judges for telling ‘hundreds of stories’ through a single piece of artwork and drawing attention to how architects should consider the lifetime of a building across a period of time:

‘It’s a modern day Archigram drawing but also a step into the future,’ says Narinder Sagoo, one of the judges and senior partner at Foster + Partners.

Han’s drawing is entitled ‘The Samsara of Building No. 42 on Dirty Street’ and shows a ‘chronological visual narrative’ of the development of a building in Beijing over a period of nearly 10 years, from a residential building into a commercial venue for businesses, then back again into a residential building. The drawing takes on the role of a document that explores the relationship between social and political urban development.

While Han won the digital category and was also announced the overall winner, the other two category winners were Lukas Göbl of Austrian practice göbl architektur in the ‘hybrid’ category and Carlijn Kingma of Studio Carlijn Kingma in the ‘hand-drawn’ category.

Farshid Moussavi, founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture and a judge for the prize was impressed by Göbl’s drawing for its ‘power of intuition’ and its exemplary approach in terms of hand drawings as a ‘successful design and thinking tool’. His ongoing series examines the role of utopia in today’s society, seeing utopia as a process, more than a destination.

Images: Lukas Goebl “City of beautiful bodies” // Li Han “The Samsara of Building No. 42 on Dirty Street”

The Architecture Drawing Prize 2018
Winners Exhibition
Through 18 November 2018
Sir John Soane’s Museum
London
soane.org/
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