Architect: Superstudio
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum
4 October 2021
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum4 October 2021
There is a handwritten phrase in red ink at the bottom of this sketch, which reads in Italian: ‘for the continuous monument (genesis)’. This drawing is from one of Adolfo Natalini’s sketchbooks and depicts a series of studies about the earth. In the same sketchbook, he drew multiple sequences of… Read More
Superstudio: Finding the Horizon
12 August 2021
Superstudio: Finding the Horizon12 August 2021
Until not too long ago, I would be asked to explain to youngsters accustomed to digital graphics how I used to make montages. I felt like an archaeologist, explaining how, in the Palaeolithic era, Neanderthals used to make their tools. Across several workshops, I have realised that the techniques today… Read More
Superstudio & Piranesi: Zeno is Immortal
24 May 2021
Superstudio & Piranesi: Zeno is Immortal24 May 2021
It’s 1777 in the Italian region of Salerno, a man is resting on a massive Doric column, watching his two cows from the ruin of a temple where the weeds grow. This building was, a long time ago, considered as the house of Juno, goddess of fertility and the vital… Read More
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique
4 March 2021
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique4 March 2021
The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid has served as ‘the image of an absolute beginning’, as Rosalind Krauss affirmed in 1986 in ‘The Originality of… Read More
Superstudio: Another Mirror Image
17 February 2021
Superstudio: Another Mirror Image17 February 2021
By Ludwig Engel
Superstudio’s Campo di Mais is a hybrid of the group’s concepts and a treasure trove of unintended (and unforeseeable) references. As such, it is a quite perfect Superstudio collage – another mirror image inviting the observer to reflect their own coordinates of understanding the world through the group’s ambiguous visual… Read More
The Problem with Rainbows
12 February 2021
The Problem with Rainbows12 February 2021
Resta sempre insoluto il problema dell’arcobalenoPare que ce ne sia uno dopo la pioggiaE che dall’alto con l’aereoSi veda tutto tornaMa questo metterebbe in crisi tutto quelliChe cercano la pentola d’oro Alle fine dell’arcobaleno C’e sempre un arcobalenoAl di sopra di ogni questione sulla quantitàE qualità dei suoi coloriDopo la pioggiaMa non dopo ogni pioggia… Read More
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
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
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 Gerard Carty, Elizabeth Hatz 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
An Overwhelming Concern with Shelter! (1966)
16 September 2021
An Overwhelming Concern with Shelter! (1966)16 September 2021
By Gustav Metzger
The International Dialogue on Experimental Architecture (IDEA) was held at New Metropole Arts Centre in Folkestone, Kent, 10–11 June 1966. The symposium was organised by Archigram and included contributions from Hans Hollein, Joe Weber, Yona Friedman, Cedric Price, Arthur Quarmsby, Anthony G. William and Reyner Banham. The following text is… Read More
exhibition design theoretical & imaginary housing urban form