Columns are structural, in tension and compression; loaded, light, thick and thin; they’re symbolic and abstract – meaning something and nothing; they’re decorative and banal; they’re the orders, ordering and orderly but also disruptive; they’re political – reinforcing cultural ideas or tools to break free; they’re base + shaft + capital but not always all at the same time; they’re scary and sublime; cast, carved and paper thin; field, fragment, edge and centre; they’re heavy, hollow, hewn and hung; they’re a contradiction; an endless joke.

So columns are anything and everything; they’re all these things and more. Our ambition was to decode the principles in past works where the column takes primacy as the fundamental critical and conceptual component. Through these 100 drawings – some almost comically abstract, others full of detail – we interrogated their possibilities. We were in search of universal ideas, looking to exploit these references as concepts rather than as image or formal inspiration. This small publication, produced with the master students of Kingston School of Art, was an archive and our guide. It was our point of departure in developing an architecture where the column is the fundamental building component.

100 columns