John Hejduk Diamond House B, Projection, 1963-1967
Hejduk’s Diamond Projects sequence demonstrates how the formal qualities of the cube, and by extension the plan, are substantially altered by a Cartesian realignment of forty-five degrees. Traditionally, architectural plans have been oriented rectilinearly so that the edges of the drawing are parallel to edges of the page. An axonometric or isometric projection is based on a simple rotation of the plan on the page. By appearing to tip toward the picture plane, these projections are understood to represent volumetric qualities with ascertainable quantities.
Hejduk’s project demonstrates that a forty-five-degree realignment of a given plan does not offer readily accessible qualitative information in an axonometric projection. By contrast, it seems to flatten volumetric space, and its reading can be further complicated by layering successively projected plans atop one another. The qualitative information in the projections becomes distorted, though the quantitative information remains intact.
Diamond House B was reproduced in color in a special boxed portfolio that also included Hejduk’s Diamond House A and the Diamond Museum.
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