CATALOG RAISONNÉ






Edgar Papazian is an artist practicing as an architect.



He believes architecture has the capacity to heal and protect by providing personal space for privacy and thought, free from reductive and restrictive social class roles.

The many drawings herein are meant to be considered research, autonomous from any built analogues and not simply instruments of service.

Edgar is a graduate of Columbia and Yale Universities and is professor at the New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, USA, where he teaches architectural studios at a college level.

This website serves as a location for current research and creative projects (SET-A), and also as a repository of digitised hand-drawn works created between 1993 and 2024 both as a student and as a pracitising architect (SET-B).










“...He apparently had no significant master and followed no specific architectural tradition. Like some other priest-architects from the major orders... he was first of all an intellectual - a mathematician and a philosopher - and for him architecture was a form of erudition.”   -Richard Pommer (referring to the architect Guarino Guarini), Eighteenth-Century Architecture in Piedmont, 1961.
Edgar Birge Papazian    e.papazian.73@gmail.com





SHOW: All  SET—A  SET—B

2400.03
2024, Sag Harbor, USA
Drawing explorations of San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, Italy

Commentary:  portion of a “drawing conversation” had on Instagram between myself and Victor Agran, architect,  former classmate at Yale. 

Research:  Metric analysis of a space through the extensive documentation provided by Paolo Portoghesi in his monograph on Borromini. Inspiration also via Andrew Saunders’ Lidar images. 

Exploration
Francesco Castello Borromini Baroque architecture
San Carlino


2400.02
2024, Sag Harbor, USA 
Architectural competition entry, new Gyumri covered market and culinary school, Gyumri, Armenia, sponsored by Tumo Ctr. for Creative Technologies.

Commentary:  Using traditional Armenian stone vaulting techniques architect created a series of arcades which were seismically separated from the earth in this active earthquake zone. Entry.

Competition
Armenia
Gyumri
covered market
shouka


2400.01
06–28–2024, Water Mill, USA
Pecha Kucha presentation, “The Future that Never Happened” can be viewed here.  Presented at the Parrish Art Museum. 

Commentary:  speaking “truth to power” in a Hamptons, NY context. 

Lecture
Dystopian Hamptons
Pecha Kucha
sustainability


2300.01
2023, Sag Harbor, USA
Fortress Armenia Illustration. 

Commentary:  during the Azerbaijaini invasion of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in 2023, I produced this commentary, showing a “porcupine” fortresslike Armenia able to defend its borders through military prowess, an aspiration for the country. 

Illustration
Armenia
Artsakh
Nagorno-Karabagh
Fortress Armenia


2400.02
2029-2024, various locations 
Life drawings, ongoing explorations.

Commentary:  colleceted from past few years of sketching from life. I owe some of my approach to life drawing to Elke Solomon, art professor at Columbia University. That as well as the first year freehand drawing course taught at Yale by Philip Grausman and William (Bill) Butler.

Exploration
life drawing sketchbook pencil 
pen


2300.02
2023, Andes, USA
Book of Sleep preparatory drawings.

Commentary:  childrens’ book. 

Research:  each image leads into the next via distance cues, following the path of an itinerant child. 

Sketch 
line drawing, perspective

2301.01
2023, Sag Harbor, USA
Four bedroom house in [location witheld]. Incorporates brise soleil, shou sugi ban siding, and sensitive siting based on a unique plot of land with mature tress. Called “house in the hollow.” Design attempted to line up views of trees from the interior framed in vertical windows and joined horizontal skylights.

Commentary:  unexecuted. Entry for 2024 Daniel Rowen design awards for Peconic chapter of the American Institure of Architects. 
Design
modern house

2400.04
2024, Sag Harbor, USA
Renovation scheme for a 1950’s Peter Blake house in Water Mill, NY.

Commentary:  in discussion with homewoner, who wants to do the right thing with this iconic property.



Design
modernist house renovation
©2024Edgar B. Papazian