Plattegrond en doorsneden van Kasteel Ammersoyen 1932

This is a plan and cross-section of Ammersoyen Castle, made by Wegner & Mottu. Looking at it, I’m thinking about what it might have been like to draw this, hunched over a table, with the smell of ink, trying to get everything just so. There’s a real sense of care here. All those dark lines defining the castle walls, the little details of the windows and turrets. You can almost feel the weight of the stone, the coolness of the rooms. It reminds me a bit of Piranesi, with his obsessive architectural renderings, but there’s something more practical about this, less romantic. I imagine Wegner & Mottu thinking about the castle not just as a building, but as a place where people lived, worked, and defended themselves. It is like they were building a kind of conversation with the past, and that's what great art does too.