Off Location: Drawings for the US Embassy Moscow

Off Location: Drawings for the US Embassy Moscow

To mark the opening of the new US Embassy London in Nine Elms, Pushkin House and the Drawing Matter Trust present a pop-up exhibition of the recently acquired drawings of the US Embassy Moscow, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Pushkin House, the UK’s oldest independent Russian cultural centre will present for two weeks a stunning series of drawings by the architectural illustrator Carlos Diniz from the early 1970s. These drawings show the US creating a micro-environment for its embassy – a feature that characterizes later examples of the typology including Nine Elms.

Carlos Diniz was one of the pioneers of architectural visualisation- the skill of taking architects’ plans and presenting them as perspectives of fully landscaped, occupied buildings. Born in Beverley Hills, he brought the pizazz of Hollywood to architectural drawing, working in his long career with the Pritzker prize winning architect Frank Gehry and Walt Disney amongst many others. Although he was a technical innovator, co-opting printing techniques from movie poster design to bring colour to his drawings, he was also an incredible draughtsman. His work for the US Embassy Moscow shows also his subtle skills as a diplomat of architectural design. His work has recently been acquired by Drawing Matter, a UK-based charitable foundation that promotes the discussion of architectural drawing.

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