Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
Capitol or Capital?
2 September 2021
Capitol or Capital?2 September 2021
From the Editors: 1. We have been re-reading Martin Pawley’s collected essays. Each comes as a rich reminder that here was the contrarian voice of the 1970s and 80s, whose commentary – on architecture, architects and contemporary society – ought to be replayed to readers now on a continuous, salutary,… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 17: Monadnock
1 September 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 17: Monadnock1 September 2021
By Job Floris and Fabrizio Gallanti
This is the seventeenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. Here, Fabrizio interviews Job Floris, co-founder of Mondanock, about their teaching studios at the EFPL and Harvard… Read More
The H-plan: Breuer, Stirling, Gowan
5 August 2021
The H-plan: Breuer, Stirling, Gowan5 August 2021
The interesting note by Neil Jackson tying Gowan and his Isle of Wight House to the bi-nuclear plans of Breuer and then to Craig Ellwood’s Hillsborough House, reminds me of Stirling’s own early interest in Breuer, whose Connecticut work he saw during his 1948 internship in New York during his… Read More
Sketches from Algiers
2 August 2021
Sketches from Algiers2 August 2021
In October 1975 I returned to Cambridge to complete my architecture course. I had spent my year out in London with MacCormac and Jamieson, an exciting time as it was early days for this young practice and I was one of their very first assistants. In fact, I nearly didn’t… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 16: Luis Callejas
28 July 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 16: Luis Callejas28 July 2021
This is the sixteenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. Here, Luis Callejas (LCLA OFFICE) discusses his teaching studios at the Yale School of Architecture and the… Read More
Insignificance 4: Self-reflexive
26 July 2021
Insignificance 4: Self-reflexive26 July 2021
Whoever decides to study the conditions of a practice of imagining architecture through/as line will, I am afraid, be left in despair. Once the theatrical mask of line’s incontrovertible instrumentality is seen to slip, line’s solidity, its all too evident honesty as a simple mimetic tool, turns up by and… Read More
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House
25 July 2021
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House25 July 2021
I find myself lost in the woods, then reorientated, guided by the centralised chimney. Standing dead centre in front of the gate lodge, my gaze is lifted to the space between chimney and sky, between foreground or background. A cloud of white smoke disguises itself as an English cloud, passing… Read More
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House
21 July 2021
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House21 July 2021
By James Gowan, J. M. Richards, Laurent Stalder, James Stirling and Ellis Woodman
This first impetus for this article was provided by Laurent Stalder’s discussion of the sectional perspective drawing for the Isle of Wight house, reproduced here, which lead us to J. M. Richards’ seminal essay, and then onward through the literature. In addition, we asked the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Canadian… Read More
Letter to the Editors: What I see in drawings today…
5 July 2021
Letter to the Editors: What I see in drawings today…5 July 2021
All the discussions, observations or decisions, concerning any of the projects of Aldo Rossi, by clients, city mayors, commissions or whoever had to approve or express a comment, were always made over his first sketch. There you had everything, the building – or whatever was the project for – was… Read More
Keeping a Notebook
24 June 2021
Keeping a Notebook24 June 2021
By Simon Unwin
Looking into other people’s notebooks is to witness moments of creative exploration and growth. A graphic facility in others can provoke envy, but being given access into someone else’s mind and seeing where it wanders is always stimulating. As the examples published by Drawing Matter illustrate, architects’ notebooks harbour many… Read More
Architectural Drawing (1983)
22 June 2021
Architectural Drawing (1983)22 June 2021
This essay was first published in the catalogue for Drawings by Architects (25 February – 3 April 1983), held at the ICA in London. A period piece, for sure, the text sits at the cusp of changing attitudes to the display and value attributed to architect’s drawings. In recent years… 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