


































































































































- Museum for Architectural Drawing, Berlin
- Make models: 20 Ropemaker Street, part 2
- The value of the drawing
- The hand does not draw superfluous things
- Balance
- Interview with Lendlease’s Natalie Slessor
- Prized hand-drawings return a building to an organically conceived whole
- Draw to Make
- Interview with Brookfield Properties’ Stuart Harman
- Drawing details – technical and poetic
- Betts Project
- Interview with Frasers Property Australia’s Joanna Russell
- Music and the workplace
- Combatting loneliness in the built environment
- Wellbeing and the workplace
- Interview with Brookfield Properties’ Peter Clarke
- An update from Sydney
- Retail innovation beyond the shop door: Lessons from the USA (part 1)
- Make Roundtable
- Make models: 20 Ropemaker Street, part 3
- Sydney born and razed
- Interview with Argent’s Nick Searl
- Retail innovation beyond the shop door: Lessons from the USA (part 2)
- Make models: 20 Ropemaker Street, part 1
- Retail innovation beyond the shop door: Lessons from the USA (part 3)
- Interview with Vicinity Centres’ Rachele Godridge
- The smart workplace
- Architecture and Creativity
- Interview with General Projects’ Jacob Loftus
- Interview with Chinachem’s Donald Choi
- High-density living in Hong Kong
- Make’s past, present and future
- Make manifesto
- The Architecture Drawing Prize – Not just another competition
- Leaving a mark
- Community connections
- My time with the BCO
- The call of the wild
- Long live the office
- The art of an art historian
- Mary, queen of hotels
- Make models: Portsoken Pavilion
- The Make Charter
- Why Brexit will see a glass half-full emptied
- Make models: LSQ London
- Disappearing Here – On perspective and other kinds of space
- Drawing and thinking
- Drawing to an end?
- Making shops exciting again: Lessons from the Nordics (part 1)
- Make models: Grosvenor Waterside
- Drawing architecture
- The Hollow Man: poetry of drawing
- Above and beyond
- Interview with Lendlease’s Kevin Chapman
- Making shops exciting again: Lessons from the Nordics (part 2)
- Plein air in the digital age
- A “Plan in Impossible Perspective”
- Art Editor’s picks
- Making shops exciting again: Lessons from the Nordics (part 3)
- The future of bespoke HQs
- Make models: The Luna
- World-class architecture
- The Architecture Drawing Prize exhibition review
- The future is bright but not the same
- Employee ownership
- The tools of drawing
- Trecento re-enactment
- Lessons on future office design from Asia Pacific
- The human office
- How drawing made architecture
- Advocating sustainable facade design
- Make models: FC Barcelona’s Nou Palau Blaugrana
- Drawing as an architect’s tool
- Are you VReady?
- Cycle design for the workplace
- The Architecture Drawing Prize
- Make models: an urban rail station
- Reporting from Berlin
- City-making and Sadiq
- Hand-drawing, the digital (and the archive)
- Ken Shuttleworth on drawing
- The green tiger
- Stefan Davidovici – green Mars architect
- When drawing becomes architecture
- Make models: Swindon Museum and Art Gallery
- The role of the concept sketch
- Make calls for a cultural shift in industry’s approach to fire safety
- 2036: A floor space odyssey
- Harold on tour
- London refocused
- Hotels by Make
- Full court press
- Digital Danube
- Don’t take a pop at POPS
- The future of architecture – Matthew Bugg
- The future of architecture – Jet Chu
- The future of architecture – Robert Lunn
- The future of architecture – David Patterson
- The future of architecture – Rebecca Woffenden
- The future of architecture – Katy Ghahremani
- Safer streets for all
- The importance of post-occupancy evaluation for our future built environment
- Put a lid on it
- Designing for a liveable city
- The future of architecture – Bill Webb
- Bricks – not just for house builders
- Designing in the City of Westminster
- Rolled gold
- How to make a fine suit
- Responsible sourcing starts with design
- Is off-site manufacture the answer?
- Developing a design for the facade of 7-10 Hanover Square
- Curious Sir Christopher Wren
- Responsible resourcing should be an integral part of every project
- The socio-economic value of people-focused cities

In 1915, Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) submitted a single competition entry for a new woodland cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden. It comprised a vast and intricate site plan in which each individual pine tree was inscribed on the drawing, peppered with towers, chapels, crematoria, clearings, and avenues. Borrowing from myth and Nordic folklore, the proposal reflected on—and subsequently defined—the nation’s attitude to death and remembrance.
To realise Skogskyrkogården the architects moved heaven and earth. New, if not subtle, approaches to cosmic symbolism were established and shaped in brick, mortar, stone and wood, while earth itself—the very mass of the landscape—was excavated and recast to form a gentle, undulating topography of interlocking forests, vistas, and ritual sequences. While many of their original ambitions were lost to years of incremental refinement, one chapel—Lewerentz’s Uppståndelsekapellet (Chapel of Resurrection)—represents the spirit of an imaginative synthesis of northern aesthetic traditions and burial practices in the context of a rapidly modernising world.
The Way of the Seven Wells, a long axial pathway that stretches from an elevated elm grove to the Uppståndelsekapellet, is among the few gestures that survived the (often brutal) iterative design process. While the wells themselves were never completed, the pathway forges a long, processional avenue from the entrance of the cemetery to the freestanding canopy of the chapel; a direct line of movement, sided by a tall wall of pine trees, sheltered from open sunlight and the slightest breeze.
In a 1923 drawing, Lewerentz—or, some maintain, his sometime collaborator Kurt von Schmalensee (1896-1972)—sought to articulate the complex spatial arrangement that sprung from the termination of the Way of the Seven Wells and the spaces—both interior and exterior—that make up the chapel. Described by one researcher as a “plan in impossible perspective”, by another as “Lewerentz’s naivistic [sic] drawing”, and by most as merely a “site plan”, the drawing is in fact a logical representation of an intricate and symbolic orchestration of funerary movements.
For most services that take place in the Uppståndelsekapellet the deceased arrives by way of the road that slices this drawing horizontally, intersecting the Way of the Seven Wells. From here, gathered mourners assembled in the enclosed square adjacent to the chapel, prior entering. Or, in case of rain and snow, beneath the Pillar Hall or in Lewerentz’s waiting room – a later addition, positioned on the site of the semicircular clearing. Once the first phase of the service is complete, the deceased and their mourners exit the space by way of a second door on the western side of the building, descending a shallow staircase toward the place of internment.
In this drawing, an entire pattern of sequentially interwoven rituals and movements are penned with remarkably precise representational language. Landscapes—contained, compressed, and open—are articulated with implacable functionalism while, at the same time, reference an entirely unique and highly nuanced corporate understanding. In this way, the drawing is in itself a masterful example of the rich conceptual potential of the architectural drawing.
This post forms part of our series on The Architecture Drawing Prize: an open drawing competition curated by Make, WAF and Sir John Soane’s Museum to highlight the importance of drawing in architecture. The winning and shortlisted drawings are being exhibited at Sir John Soane’s Museum 21 February – 14 April 2018.