PASTICHE
2025

Exhibition in collaboration with Luiz Solano, presenting ten new works of each.

Text: Owen Nichols (a83):

The word pastiche comes from pasticcio, an Italian baked dish made from a mix of different ingredients. The term liter- ally refers to a “mess,” but not in a negative sense—it simply describes something made by combining different parts into a new whole. When the idea of pastiche was adopted into architectural discourse, it gained a more complicated meaning. For architects trained in the strict ideals of high modernism, pastiche represented everything they were taught to avoid: mixing styles, borrowing too openly from history, or relying on imagery that seemed too playful or decorative. Because of this, pastiche became closely linked to postmodern design, which some critics dismissed as unserious or overly graphic. 

This narrow view overlooks how pastiche actually functions—not only in buildings, but especially in drawing. Across history, many architects and designers have used pastiche as a tool for composing images and ideas. Albertian dia- grams, Lutyens’s hybrid classical-vernacular sketches, Frank Furness’s exaggerated profiles, Rossi’s typological draw- ings, and the boldly graphic work of Michael Graves, Peter Wilson, and Arata Isozaki all show how pastiche can operate powerfully on paper. In these examples, drawing becomes a space where fragments of architectural language—motifs, silhouettes, symbols, and forms—can be selected, rearranged, and transformed. 

In that sense, pastiche is not just about style; it is a method of composition. A designer begins with recognizable pieces: a classical column, a window profile, a roofline, a familiar plan diagram, or a decorative pattern. These fragments carry histories with them. When recomposed in a drawing, they create a new visual argument. The drawing becomes a site where references are tested, combined, exaggerated, or even contradicted. This is especially relevant for graphic work, where the freedom of the page allows architectural ideas to be pushed beyond what would be practical or possible in built form. 

Charles Jencks’s idea of “double-coding”—that postmodern works communicate on more than one level—applies strongly to graphic pastiche. A drawing can be both an architectural study and a visual joke, both a critique and an homage. Pastiche allows for the accessibility of drawings to various audiences due to a layered readability. This is part of what makes pastiche productive: it creates images that operate as conversations. 

In drawings, this conversation is internal as well as external. The composition speaks to its own construction—it reveals its borrowings, its influences, and its choices. Because graphic work often simplifies, stylizes, or abstracts architectural elements, the act of pastiche becomes even more visible. The viewer sees not only the references but the act of putting them together. This clarity can open questions about why certain motifs matter, what histories are being revisited, or how architectural language shifts when removed from buildings and placed onto paper. 

When understood this way, pastiche is not a fallback or a decorative flourish but a deliberate and thoughtful graphic strategy. It acknowledges that architectural imagery is never neutral: every line, profile, or ornament carries meaning. By intentionally mixing and recombining these motifs, drawings can explore architecture’s cultural memory, test new relationships between forms, or uncover unexpected alignments between periods, styles, and ideas. 

For this exhibition, pastiche becomes a framework for understanding how architectural motifs can be reinterpreted through drawing. The works here do not aim to propose buildings; instead, they use the visual language of architec- ture—its fragments, symbols, and recurring shapes—as raw material for graphic invention. The “mess” suggested by pasticcio is not disorder but possibility: a chance to bring together elements from different origins and let them form new compositions. Through this process, drawings produce their own kind of architecture—one built in lines, references, and ideas rather than bricks or concrete.