Edgar Papazian is an artist who has practiced architecture with a license.
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. He was president of American Institute of Architecture - Peconic chapter in 2024.
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
2400.03
2024, Sag Harbor, USADrawing 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, USAPecha 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, USAFortress 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 the past few years of sketching from life. I owe some of my approach to life drawing to Elke Solomon, art professor at Columbia University, who herself offered the drawings of Pierre Bonnard as an example to follow, with their multiple gestures and textures. 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
Pierre Bonnard
Elke Solomon
Philip Grausman
William Butler
2300.02
2023, Andes, USABook of Sleep preparatory drawings.
Commentary: childrens’ book.
Research: each image leads into the next via distance cues, following the path of an itinerant child. All of these drawings used a CAD underlay. 18x24.
Sketch
line drawing, perspective
childrens
book