Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Cloud Board and the Architectural Drawing
30.04.2026
Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Cloud Board and the Architectural Drawing30.04.2026
On the 12th of March 1968, Scottish concrete poet Ian Hamilton Finlay wrote, as he did frequently throughout the late 1960s, to friend and architect Philip Steadman. ‘Dear Phil,’ he began, ‘I have been meaning for some time to ask if you could help me with some rough drawings, of… Read More
The Open Hand Reloaded
24.04.2026
The Open Hand Reloaded24.04.2026
The above notes are based on a paper first presented at the workshop Long Table Conversation on ‘NonAligned Modernism’ held at the University of Washington in Seattle on October 31, 2025, moderated by Adair Rounthwaite (Art History) and with an introduction by Vikram Prakash (HHF/Architecture). * Maristella Casciato (architect, architectural… Read More
The House Stands Still While Life Moves
17.04.2026
The House Stands Still While Life Moves17.04.2026
The house has a floor sticky like honey; our feet cling to it and we cannot get away from it. The house is a rucksack so huge and full on our shoulders that every movement becomes impossible. The house is an unconditional refuge for those who fear all the mishaps… Read More
Rewriting Eisenman
06.04.2026
Rewriting Eisenman06.04.2026
In his new book Rewriting Alberti, Peter Eisenman applies the ‘most important lesson in architecture’ that he ever received to a study of the origin of the discipline in the Western tradition.[1] Standing at the fount of that tradition is the fifteenth-century Florentine scholar and architect Leon Battista Alberti.[2] From… Read More
On Cedric Price
02.04.2026
On Cedric Price02.04.2026
Cedric Price’s thinking and work have had a very particular influence on my work, in the sense that some fundamental choices I have made as an architect have been deeply influenced by his philosophy. In this sense, it seems to me that Cedric Price was one of the few architects… Read More
A Taste for Architectural Drawings
01.04.2026
A Taste for Architectural Drawings01.04.2026
The smelling and tasting of historical architectural drawings have been overlooked by scholars as valuable research tools, particularly in matters of dating and authorship. In this short discussion—a foretaste of a future volume, or two, that I intend to write on the subject—I demonstrate that drawings made by architects, including… Read More
Louis Kahn: Sketch for a Mural
30.03.2026
Louis Kahn: Sketch for a Mural30.03.2026
Drawing Matter holds a large number of drawings, prints and other materials relating to a project for an office building in Kansas City designed by Louis Kahn. The project was one of the last that the architect worked on before his death in 1974, and many of the drawings carry… Read More
Working (with) Drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection
27.03.2026
Working (with) Drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection27.03.2026
– Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Maria Mitsoula
The following text was first published in Stoà 14 – SCUOLE, SYLLABUS / SCHOOLS, BRIEF (Autumn 2025). * Drawing Matter and its Collection The Drawing Matter Collection, carefully assembled by collector, curator, and critic Niall Hobhouse over thirty years, comprises around 20,000 objects—including architectural drawings, models, photographs, and sketchbooks, among others—from around the… Read More
The Architectural Competition: Shopfront to ‘The Trade’
20.03.2026
The Architectural Competition: Shopfront to ‘The Trade’20.03.2026
Alexander Scott Carter’s winning designs for single and double-fronted W.H. Smith shopfronts form a remote bookend to a troubled time for architectural competitions in Britain. The other arrived approximately 75 years earlier in the form of a satirical drawing produced to open Augustus Pugin’s Contrasts (1836). It too was a… Read More
Protected: James Gowan’s Schreiber House
19.03.2026
Protected: James Gowan’s Schreiber House19.03.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
André des Gachons: Weather Warning
19.03.2026
André des Gachons: Weather Warning19.03.2026
The recent publication, La Veille du ciel: aquarelles météorologiques (Phénomène éditions), one of the most beautiful books published in 2025, gathers together forty years of daily weather reports by André des Gachons on the skies above the small rural commune of La Chaussée-sur-Marne, in eastern France. Des Gachons remained subjective… Read More
Baroqsysms
16.03.2026
Baroqsysms16.03.2026
Are architects wired to interpret reality flattened into two dimensions, with the third hovering somewhere nearby like an amputated ghost limb? Can short-form video animations, generated by Artificial Intelligence, scratch that phantom itch between two and three dimensions that we, survivors of this mental re-ordering, suffer from? I started thinking about… Read More
Massinissa Selmani
09.03.2026
Massinissa Selmani 09.03.2026
The nomination of the Algerian artist Massinissa Selmani for the 2023 Prix Marcel Duchamp was an official acknowledgement that a practice grounded primarily in pencil drawing on paper on a modest scale can constitute a major contribution to contemporary art.[1] In Selmani’s abbreviated aesthetic, weighty ideas are carried by the… Read More
The Brick Pencil: Analogue Technology in a Digital Age
27.02.2026
The Brick Pencil: Analogue Technology in a Digital Age27.02.2026
Part 1: The Brick Pencil In a colour photograph with the rich saturation of Kodachrome, against an aquamarine background, a manicured hand grips an upright brick. Taped to the brick, tip down, is a pencil. The weight of the brick is palpable. Someone is working hard to write with this… Read More
Drawing of a Cause
25.02.2026
Drawing of a Cause25.02.2026
The following text is based on an excerpt from Lost Causes: Possibilidade e Política em Concursos de Habitação (Porto: Circo de Ideias, 2025), edited by João Manuel Miranda and Tiago Antero. The book presents the results of ‘Lost Causes’, a research project that aims to promote critical reflection on unbuilt… Read More
Chatter: Richard Wentworth with Roger Malbert, Rowan Moore and Marina Warner (Video)
20.02.2026
Chatter: Richard Wentworth with Roger Malbert, Rowan Moore and Marina Warner (Video)20.02.2026
– Editors
Drawing Matter’s 2026 Public Programme launched with Chatter, an informal evening that encouraged conversation around drawings and objects from the collection. For Chatter #1, we collaborated with the artist Richard Wentworth to select drawings and objects that relate to his work and interests. For the evening, material from different contexts,… Read More
Het woonpalazzo – The Residential Palazzo
16.02.2026
Het woonpalazzo – The Residential Palazzo16.02.2026
Open any book by a Dutch architect and you are bound to come across H. P. Berlage—the forefather from whom sprang everything, albeit indirectly, from the Amsterdam School to Der Stijl and who is revered for his contribution at all scales from the details of his buildings to his town… Read More
John Hejduk, Object/Subject Riga
13.02.2026
John Hejduk, Object/Subject Riga13.02.2026
I began photographing John Hejduk’s work at the beginning of my interest in photography, when I knew little about his work and about architecture in general. Yet photographing John Hejduk came to me in a very natural way. His work, being so unique, had no visual references, and that gave… Read More
Saul Steinberg: Bucharest, Milan, New York
09.02.2026
Saul Steinberg: Bucharest, Milan, New York09.02.2026
Steinberg is for me, first of all, the New Yorker magazine—one of the most intelligent and open American publications, with a very distinct graphic style that includes a generous use of drawings and cartoons, born and fed by the amazingly rich cultural landscape of New York City. I see New York… Read More
‘ONE’ — A Workshop at Drawing Matter
05.02.2026
‘ONE’ — A Workshop at Drawing Matter05.02.2026
– Charles Batach, Fabrizio Gallanti, Youssef Khobaiz, Marina Lathouri, Katerina Papanikolopoulos, Roberto Rodriguez and Freny Shah
This article tries to convey the collective exhilaration of a week-long seminar with Drawing Matter: five days, four writing exercises based on the analysis, observation and writing of archival and graphic material from the Drawing Matter Collection. Since 2014, the History and Critical Thinking postgraduate programme at the Architectural Association… Read More
Architecture that Does not Perform
02.02.2026
Architecture that Does not Perform02.02.2026
A trip with our studio EBBA to Cambridge for our Christmas party resurfaced a familiar feeling. Moving through the city with its colleges, courts, libraries and streets, it became apparent how often architects expect things to perform. Buildings are read for what they signify, how clearly they express an idea… Read More
Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Photography
30.01.2026
Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Photography30.01.2026
The following text is one of the entries included in the recently published book Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2025) edited by Uwe Fleckner and Mari Lending. The book, presented in the form of a dictionary, examines architectural provenance across 101 key concepts, from acquisition to… Read More
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
The Incessant Power of Drawings
05.05.2026
The Incessant Power of Drawings05.05.2026
– Fabrizio Gallanti
We have come to doubt the real necessity of being exposed to original artefacts, as we find ourselves drowned in a deluge of endless reproductions. Why bother visiting galleries and museums when one can check stuff on the web? A picture of teenagers scrolling their cellphones in front of a… Read More
exhibition presentation