Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
Photographing Drawings
27.01.2026
Photographing Drawings27.01.2026
At Drawing Matter, we have a rule that when a new object enters the collection, it must be photographed and published within a month. With our capable photographer and her fancy equipment still in Somerset, we needed to find other ways of documenting new additions to the collection. We tried… Read More
Protected: On Cedric Price
15.01.2026
Protected: On Cedric Price15.01.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Summer Evenings on Sukhna Dam
08.01.2026
Summer Evenings on Sukhna Dam08.01.2026
Poornmashi. The bright full-moon nights of the year were always opportunities for us to try to convince our parents to organise a picnic at the Lake. Chandigarh is a long way from the ocean, way inland, surrounded by the vast Indo-Gangetic plains. And although the mighty Himalayas are right at… Read More
Protected: Het woonpalazzo (The Residential Palazzo)
07.01.2026
Protected: Het woonpalazzo (The Residential Palazzo)07.01.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Protected: ‘ONE’ — A Workshop at Drawing Matter
19.12.2025
Protected: ‘ONE’ — A Workshop at Drawing Matter19.12.2025
– Charles Batach, Fabrizio Gallanti, Youssef Khobaiz, Marina Lathouri, Katerina Papanikolopoulos, Roberto Rodriguez and Freny Shah
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
In the Archive: Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Daniel Talesnik
18.12.2025
In the Archive: Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Daniel Talesnik18.12.2025
– Kenneth Frampton and Daniel Talesnik
In this instalment of our ‘In the Archive’ series, eminent architectural historian Kenneth Frampton is joined by architect and curator Daniel Talesnik. Through drawings of built and unbuilt works by Ove Arup, Stirling & Gowan, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Patrick Hodgkinson, to name a few, the conversation ranges from… Read More
The Many Lives of the Open Hand
08.12.2025
The Many Lives of the Open Hand08.12.2025
Saturday afternoon, 4pm, the summer heat. My father revs up the engines of his Fiat 1100, his pride and joy. It is the early 1970s and I am in my pre-teens. Small for my age, I squeeze into the front seat, between my parents. I am not welcome in the… Read More
This is Tomorrow
02.12.2025
This is Tomorrow 02.12.2025
The following text is excerpted from the catalogue of the exhibition Theo Crosby: One Hundred Lives, which is on view at Osh Gallery London until the 11th December 2025. Curated by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and researcher Tess McCann, the exhibition focuses on the life and work of Theo Crosby, one of the founding… Read More
Notes on Louis-Hippolyte Lebas’ Travel Sketchbooks (Video)
20.11.2025
Notes on Louis-Hippolyte Lebas’ Travel Sketchbooks (Video) 20.11.2025
The sketchbook is your loyal private companion, your eyewitness and accomplice on voyeuristic escapes and inquisitive journeys. It is a brain in your hand, mirroring even subconscious registrations, only discovered afterwards, as you flick through the pages, absent-mindedly. You remember—much has already entered you, through the hand. I cry when… Read More
In Palau, Sardinia, on the East Coast
03.11.2025
In Palau, Sardinia, on the East Coast03.11.2025
Anyone who has seen and contemplated certain beautiful and simple ancient Mediterranean houses, such as those found in Greece, Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, knows that modern examples rarely possess the wisdom and beauty of these anonymous, traditional dwellings. Wisdom, above all: the thickness of the walls, for coolness and… Read More
Lucien Hervé: A Photographer with Scissors
23.10.2025
Lucien Hervé: A Photographer with Scissors23.10.2025
We are thankful to Ross Anderson, who identified these statements Lucien Hervé made when interviewed by Hans Ulrich Olbrist, and which are pertinent to this contact sheet in the Drawing Matter Collection: ‘When Le Corbusier received me in his office one day, we talked for a long time; I remember that he… Read More
Reason for Drawings
20.10.2025
Reason for Drawings 20.10.2025
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a certain drawing did NOT exist? I am forever grateful to Cedric Price for doing this drawing. If he had not done it, my job of devising a way to order and organise materials for what became Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: a forward-minded retrospective (AA/CCA,… Read More
John Hejduk: Means, Ends
09.10.2025
John Hejduk: Means, Ends09.10.2025
Peter Eisenman was wrong… It is architecture, even if you can’t ‘get in it.’[1] But he was also right… ‘The tradition of the architect-writer is well precedented in the history of architecture.’[2] It might remain a question without an answer, though it is curious that on large, the once hyphenated… Read More
Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt
29.09.2025
Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt29.09.2025
A drawing for?A drawing of?Before?After?An explanation?An idea?An instruction?Precise?Approximate?Careful?Loose?For the artist?For us?For sale? A seemingly quiet drawing raises many questions. Ulrich Rückriem splits, saws and breaks stone. It is a process that defies determination through drawing—or perhaps one that is itself drawing. How can an idea be drawn for a material… Read More
Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City
24.09.2025
Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City24.09.2025
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives
15.09.2025
Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives15.09.2025
The following text is a partially revised version of that delivered and published in ‘Stoà Open Seminar. Emerging perspectives on teaching and research in architectural design’ (May 2024). It has since become the conceptual framework for a series of seminars held on the same subject at the School of Architecture… Read More
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space
11.09.2025
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space 11.09.2025
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space by Paul Carter mediates between graphic form and text, movement-tracking, and place-making to delineate the interstices of public space: what escapes its formal description and what falls outside official design. The book responds to pertinent concerns about the interface between the designers of public… Read More
Tolerance
04.09.2025
Tolerance04.09.2025
Too many people have talked about how profoundly the production of architecture has changed in the wake of the digital revolution. Far fewer have noted how architecture has resisted the seductive flourishes of digital production and maintained a dogged continuity with social and historical space. Bricks remain bricky even when… Read More
In the Archive: Maristella Casciato (Video)
01.09.2025
In the Archive: Maristella Casciato (Video)01.09.2025
From April to July, Maristella Casciato was Drawing Matter’s Visiting Scholar—our first in London. During her time in the archive, she made new discoveries and started many stimulating conversations. Among other things, she closely studied Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Punjab Grille Capitol album, translated a selection of Gio Ponti’s illustrated letters,… Read More
Polly Hutchison on John Ruskin’s Rocks (Video)
11.08.2025
Polly Hutchison on John Ruskin’s Rocks (Video)11.08.2025
In early July, Polly Hutchison from the Natural History Museum spent an afternoon at Drawing Matter examining a number of specimens from John Ruskin’s collection of siliceous minerals. In this short film, Polly explains the geological processes by which they were made and some of the resulting characteristics that likely… Read More
Living Landscapes: Narrative Maps from The John Rylands Library
01.08.2025
Living Landscapes: Narrative Maps from The John Rylands Library01.08.2025
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of… Read More
Genius loci
24.07.2025
Genius loci24.07.2025
This text was first published in French in d’a | d’architectures (no 322,11 December 2024) as a review of the exhibition Trompe-l’oeil, from 1520 to the present day, which was on show at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris from 17 October 2024 to 2 March 2025. * It is difficult to distinguish between the… Read More
Protected: The house stands still while life moves
27.01.2026
Protected: The house stands still while life moves27.01.2026
– Alessandro Mendini
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
DMC plan elevation presentation theoretical & imaginary