PLINTH

A three person practice · plans, sections, elevations · nothing rendered

The drawing is the original.
 The building is the copy.

We are a practice of three. Every project leaves this office as a set of drawings before it is anything else, and the drawings tell the truth: graphite where we are still thinking, ink where we are certain, and red wherever the section cuts. Nothing on this page is a render. Nothing ever will be.

PLINTH PRACTICE ARCHIVE · NO. 001 · SHEET 01 Scale 1:50
PLATE I LONG SECTION AA THROUGH OUR OWN DRAWING ROOM. GRAPHITE, INK, SECTION RED. THE STRATA ARE REAL; WE CHECKED.

Project index · drawn to date

Six parcels

The archive reads like a settlement plan: each project a parcel, each parcel drawn from the air. The red line through every figure is the section mark, waiting.

  1. N° 001

    The Drawing Room

    Program
    Our own office, drawn first
    Status
    Occupied daily

  2. N° 011

    House for a Stone Orchard

    Program
    Residence for two growers, with a cold store and a long covered table
    Area
    214 m²
    Status
    Complete, 2024

  3. N° 012

    Kiln Annex

    Program
    Wood fired kiln, drying loft, and a covered stack for two winters of fuel
    Area
    96 m²
    Status
    Under construction

  4. N° 014

    Reservoir Field Station

    Program
    Instrument room, bunk room, and a long bench for watching water behave
    Area
    142 m²
    Status
    In design

  5. N° 016

    Chapel of the Dry River

    Program
    One unprogrammed room, a bell, and a bench for forty
    Area
    68 m²
    Status
    Complete, 2025

  6. N° 017

    Archive for a Paper Maker

    Program
    Climate stable store for eight tonnes of handmade paper, with a reading room
    Area
    180 m²
    Status
    In design

Method

How a Plinth drawing is made

  1. 01

    Graphite first

    Every project starts in pencil, and the pencil is allowed to stay. Where a drawing is still thinking, you will see the smudge under the ink. We do not clean it off. The thinking is part of the record.

  2. 02

    Ink where we are certain

    Hard line work means a decision has been made. A wall drawn in ink is a wall we will defend on site. At the edges of every plate the ink is permitted to fray back into gesture, because certainty has edges too.

  3. 03

    Red where the knife passes

    One colour in the office, used for one thing. When the section plane cuts a wall, a slab, a leg, a threshold, that material fills red. Red is never decoration here. It is the cut, and only the cut.

  4. 04

    The scaffolding stays

    Compass circles, datum lines, survey stations, the plane of delineation: the geometry that built the drawing remains in the drawing. Nature never erases her construction lines. Look at any rock face. Neither do we.

Practice

Three people, one table

The office is one room and one long table, drawn above as Plate I. We take four projects a year and attend every one of them personally, pencil in pocket.

Projects a year
Four, drawn fully
Renders produced to date
None, on principle
Site visits
Written into the fee, joint by joint
Enquiries
drawings@plinth.studio