Architect: Superstudio
The Discreet Charm of the Bureaucratic
13 January 2021
The Discreet Charm of the Bureaucratic13 January 2021
When Henry-Russell Hitchcock drew a crooked line between the architecture of genius and the architecture of bureaucracy in a famous essay of 1947, he could hardly have predicted that within two decades, neo-avant-gardists around the world would embrace bureaucratic architecture because of its liberatory capacities—precisely the opposite reading of what… Read More
Drawing, Collaging, Rendering
9 December 2020
Drawing, Collaging, Rendering9 December 2020
When the ‘hard-line drawing’ has become so synonymous with the image of the architect it is easy to forget that the convenience of the everyday pen is relatively recent. For most of the long history of the world’s second-oldest profession, pen, paint and ink were reserved for competition boards or… Read More
Echo: SuperStudio & Hans Hollein
28 October 2020
Echo: SuperStudio & Hans Hollein28 October 2020
By Matt Page
S.A.U.L. 4th Year: De Rerum Natura / In the Manner Of
13 October 2020
S.A.U.L. 4th Year: De Rerum Natura / In the Manner Of13 October 2020
By Elizabeth Hatz, Gerard Carty and Fionn O'Leary
In the Autumn of 2019, tutors Elizabeth Hatz and Gerard Carty visited the Drawing Matter archive with their fourth-year students from the School of Architecture and the University of Limerick (SAUL). Below is a record of their visit and its place in the context of the fourth-year studio. Tutors interested… Read More
Superstudio: Monument Interrupted
31 August 2020
Superstudio: Monument Interrupted31 August 2020
By Julian Lewis
The collages of Superstudio’s ‘Continuous Monument’ have always seemed to me like stills from an unseen film, each image framing a part of a wider scenography. Combining the collages does not make the larger reality of the monument any less elusive or fragmentary, akin to the way that remembered dreams… Read More
Alternative Histories: Eagles of Architecture on Adolfo Natalini
29 July 2019
Alternative Histories: Eagles of Architecture on Adolfo Natalini29 July 2019
Hope as an attitude.Hope in the merging of two conflictual realities.Hope when considering the multiplicity of realms around which the encounter revolves. The paradigm which lays at the heart of the SUPERSTUDIO sketch raises a series of urgencies, doubts, eventualities.The model aims at intensifying these. In the model, a shift… Read More
Alternative Histories: OMMX on Adolfo Natalini
27 July 2019
Alternative Histories: OMMX on Adolfo Natalini27 July 2019
Alternative Histories: GAFPA on Superstudio
12 January 2019
Alternative Histories: GAFPA on Superstudio12 January 2019
We received a sketch made by Superstudio, the Italian architecture firm renowned for its conceptual architecture works.In the famous 1966 exhibition ‘Super Architecture’ the squared grid is used in a variety of scales from the simplest objects of furniture, such as a table, to an urban landscape.Through a series of… Read More
Superstudio: in Yesterday’s Tomorrow
23 December 2018
Superstudio: in Yesterday’s Tomorrow23 December 2018
‘Metamorphoses become frequent when a culture does not have sufficient courage to commit suicide (to eliminate itself) and has no clear alternatives to offer either‘ – Adolfo Natalini Following social and economic upheaval, there is often a retreat to the home. Traditionally, the ‘home’ is identified with a site of… Read More
Richard J. Neutra
10 August 2018
Richard J. Neutra10 August 2018
‘Richard J. Neutra has carried on the Wagner tradition of experimentation in new forms, materials and methods of construction… an impetus to the intelligent solution of new problems.’ Ernestine M. Fantl on the Corona Avenue School, ‘Modern Architecture in California’ (Typescript Mimeograph, MoMA Archives, 1935) Just before 6 o’clock on… Read More
Tree Speech
7 November 2020
Tree Speech7 November 2020
By Sylvia Lavin
The following text is the fourth of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More
competition landscape urban form nature