Excerpt from interview. Ben Nicholson recounting his student days:
"Libeskind mentioned I should look at the drawings of Jean-Jacques LeQueu and all of the French Revolution-era architects. I got the book and realized this does look interesting! I started producing - producing work with an ecstatic addiction. I made this project that was sited at Trafalgar Square with these creatures and animals, which included a text about these buildings that were in the shape of creatures, such as the consumption bird, the palindromic urinator"
Left: Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Section perpendiculaire d'un souterrain de la maison gothiqueRight: Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Elevation of the tomb of Porsenna, king of Etruria, known as the Tuscan Labyrinth, 1792
I wanted to go to Paris to investigate these LeQueu drawings closer. Once again a girlfriend - I told her I want to see these drawings, and she said, "Well go and see them," and I say, "I don't have any money." She was traveling there the next day by airplane and said, "Why don't you come with me and go on your bicycle." I said, "Okay I'll race you." This is at 9 o'clock at night after a bottle of wine and literarily I ran downstairs got on my bicycle and I just started cycling to Paris. And this bicycle was an old five-speed or something. It wasn't even a ten-speed - it was a trash bike. I was fit at that time - I mean domestic fit, I didn't exercise or anything. I got on to the five o'clock ferry from Dover to Calais, got to the other side and just started cycling. When I was overcome with exhaustion I'd pull over to the side sleep in a ditch, eat a bar of chocolate, and get on the bike. [Laughs] Anyway, I arrived at 3 o' clock in the morning the next day, like 32 hours riding or something, solid cycling. In the middle of the ride - in the middle of the evening, a beautiful evening, the pedal freezes up, and I had no tools or anything. [Laughs] So I limped into this farmyard and this farmer - just as in America, they can fix anything. He took the pedal off and replaced it with a pedal from his daughter's tricycle. [Laughs] And I say, 'Thanks buddy I'm out of here!'"
here is link to whole interview:
http://archinect.com/features/article/14916/ben-nicholson-s-faith-based-initiative
His Labyrinth project where he draws every possible Labyrinth
image courtesy of 'Design boom'
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/4060/venice-architecture-biennale-08-ben-nicholson.html
