Plane

An architecture practice working on houses and small public buildings. Van Doesburg argued that a plane is the only honest element, because it is what a wall actually is. The identity divides every sheet the way the practice divides a site, and never on a diagonal.

Client
Fictional, self-initiated
Sector
Architecture
Scope
Mark, division system, stationery, site, screen
Method
After Mondrian and Van Doesburg
Built
CSS grid, one generator
01

The mark

The name set tight with a single red plane closing it. The plane is a cell of the grid, not an ornament, and it is always the last element on the line.

Primary lockup with a division panel

The plane
Twenty two hundredths of the cap height wide, full height, always red and always on the right.
Weight
One weight, the heaviest cut, uppercase. There is no light version and no outline.
Tracking
Minus five per cent. The letters touch the plane and each other, because a wall meets a wall.
Never
Never use the plane alone as a symbol. It means nothing without the word it closes.
02

The division

Rules of two weights divide the sheet into cells, no two sharing a proportion, and exactly three cells take colour. Press the button and the sheet is divided again.

Rules
Two weights only, three point and seven point. A third weight turns a structure into a drawing.
Proportions
No two columns and no two rows the same. Repetition reads as a table, and a table is not a composition.
Colour
Exactly three cells, one of each primary. Never two of one colour and never a fourth cell.
Diagonal
There isn't one. Van Doesburg broke with Mondrian over exactly this, and this practice sided with Mondrian.
03

Colour

Three primaries, black and white. The primaries are not decorative and not brand colours in the ordinary sense. Each one marks a cell, and a cell is a decision about space.

Red#C8102EThe largest coloured cell on any sheet. Also the plane in the mark.
Blue#0B3C8CThe second cell, always smaller than the red.
Yellow#F2C300The third and smallest. Frequently a sliver.
Black#14120FEvery rule and all type. It is a structure, not a colour.
White#FFFFFFEvery uncoloured cell. It is the most common element by area and is never called blank.
04

Typography

One grotesque, two weights, and everything ranged left inside its cell. Type never crosses a rule, which means a cell is either large enough for the text or the division was wrong.

Project
800
House at Elm Row
Stage
500
Stage 4, technical design
Copy
300, 16 / 26
A three bedroom house on a difficult plot, built for about the cost of the flat it replaced. The stair is the only thing in it that is not orthogonal.
Data
700, tracked
Ref 2027.04 · Scale 1:50 · Sheet 12 of 31
05

Applications

Every item is a division of its own sheet. The letterhead, the drawing title block and the hoarding are the same system at three sizes, not three designs.

Project sheet

House at
Elm Row

Client
Private
Stage
4
Area
128 m2
Completion
2028

Project sheet, A4 landscape

Plane

Site hoarding, 6 × 2.4 m

Sheet 12 Ground floor plan, as proposed
Scale1:50
Ref2027.04

Drawing title block

WorkPracticeWritingContact

Nine
buildings

Houses, a village hall and a swimming pond changing room. Everything we have finished, in the order we finished it.

See the work

Website

Plane

Dear Mrs Vance,

Thank you for the drawings. We have looked at the boundary and we think the plot will take the plan you want if the stair moves to the north wall. That has consequences for the roof, which we should talk about before you commit to anything.

14 Elm RowRegistered 08114

Letterhead, A4

06

What breaks it

Each of these looks like a small improvement and each removes the one property that makes the sheets look like one practice rather than one template.

×
Do not repeat a proportion Equal columns turn a composition into a table. The eye stops looking for the structure because it has already found it.
×
Do not add a fourth colour cell Three is a composition. Four is a chart, and the reader starts hunting for what the colours mean.
×
Do not use one rule weight Two weights are what give the sheet a foreground and a background. One weight is a wireframe.
×
Do not go diagonal Van Doesburg introduced the diagonal and Mondrian left the movement over it. Pick a side and this practice has.