Citations and references have always been an essential part of architecture culture. They forge a horizon against which architects think, write, draw, speak and build.

How architects and architectural firms compose these horizons of references varies. Many construct carefully curated libraries of architecture photographs, as ‘Heinrich Helfenstein’s Photography’ provided to various practitioners, but also of books, magazines and sometimes even scale models, as is shown in ‘Clay Landscape’. Others, like ‘a Studio for Orbanism – Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office ’, create a spatial universe of drawings, sketches, models and other knick-knacks within which to work.

Architects often engage with references from other fields of knowledge, such as literature and art, as is the case in ‘Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012–22’ and ‘Ink Blot Drawings’. Nature can also serve as a source of inspiration on which to draw, as ‘City as Forest’ exemplifies.

Sometimes architects design specific devices, such as ‘Material Chariots’, ‘Forêt DesCartes’ or miniatures (e.g. ‘Bed Chamber’), that can gather, visualise and activate frames of references. Even so, expressing horizons of references in architectural design is no mean feat. Building fragments at scale 1:1, such as the ‘Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre’, can assist in gauging the legibility of the associative vocabularies that have informed a project.

@TACK Exhibition, Calligraphy by Eva Storgaard