Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
Building as Drawing: the Cowshed (2021) at Shatwell Farm
7 July 2023
Building as Drawing: the Cowshed (2021) at Shatwell Farm7 July 2023
This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here.… Read More
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse
5 July 2023
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse5 July 2023
The following text is reproduced from The Hybrid Practitioner: Building, Teaching, Researching Architecture (2022), edited by Caroline Voet, Eireen Schreurs, and Helen Thomas. The publication is available in print or as an ebook, here. You can find Joseph Bedford on Instagram here. From the 1970s through the 1990s, many architects… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate
4 July 2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate4 July 2023
This is the second part of Adrian Dannatt’s series of reflections on his family home, frequently remodelled and extended over 45 years from 1955, by his father, the architect Trevor Dannatt. Read the introduction to the series, and the first text, here. The other sign on the street—blue baked enamel as ur-signifier… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign
13 June 2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign13 June 2023
When my parents bought the house in 1955—for £1,000—one of the first things Trevor did was design this distinctive gap in the wall of the front garden, a modest modernist castle crenelation. This was deliberately aligned with the edge of the house, on a line with the front steps, so… Read More
Hardman & Co.
9 June 2023
Hardman & Co.9 June 2023
My interest in seeing the Hardman & Co. drawings at Drawing Matter was quite personally motivated as I feel a connection to the company. Partially, because I come from Birmingham where the company was based, and because I visited the studios informally in the 1980s with my parents. I was… Read More
Through a Glass Darkly
6 June 2023
Through a Glass Darkly6 June 2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. Since Burckhardt’s discovery of Petra in 1812, Europeans and… Read More
The First Exercise, One Door and One Window
1 June 2023
The First Exercise, One Door and One Window1 June 2023
In 2003, at the troubled age of eighteen, I started a Bachelor’s degree in Interior Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. The first semester was a disappointment, a disaster even. The extremely hierarchical and academic system in Italy was terribly discouraging for creativity and questioning. By raising your hand to… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. They dance.They stand.They stare.They bend.They underline.They comply.They don’t comply.They question.They agree.They dismiss.They provoke.They ignore. Each and every one of them keeps a continuous movement between what… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. First, there were a couple of tense drawings.One, two, three. At the very third second, it quickly escalated to a nonstop dry pastel scratch on A2… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. Kept behind the scenes, singing like mantras: voices in low tune. They flourish and are planted like small seeds.Their synthesis is colourful and schematic.They are all… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on walls
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on walls26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. Liberation.When I was a kid, I could not draw on walls. It was forbidden in my parents’ house. At school, we could pin pieces of paper.… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. there is no authority.there is no gravity.there is no fee.there is no programme.there is no agenda.there is no time.there is no client.there is no plot. Creatures.… Read More
On Authority
26 May 2023
On Authority26 May 2023
Following our recent series with fala we decided to approach some other practices who have themselves developed their design process through particular drawing ‘types’, challenging our expectation of the usage and forms traditionally associated with drawing in an architecture studio. We are very grateful to fala for introducing us to Nuno Melo Sousa… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: in cahiers
25 April 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: in cahiers25 April 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. As we travel, sitting, walking, flying, and running, we can look at the world.As we sit, eating, we can look at a small cahier also sitting,… Read More
Archive Politics
21 April 2023
Archive Politics21 April 2023
– Pedro Baía and Carlos Machado e Moura
The following text is an excerpt from ‘Archive Politics: Reflections based on Flashback / Carrilho da Graça’, a longer review published in Jornal Arquitectos 262 of ‘Flashback: Carrilho da Graça’, an exhibition of ten projects by João Luís Carrilho da Graça at Casa da Arquitectura, Matosinhos, (8 April 2022 – 29 January 2023), curated… Read More
Materia 5: Timber
18 April 2023
Materia 5: Timber18 April 2023
This text is the final instalment in a series by Gordon Shrigley titled ‘Materia’ in which the architect meditates on the physical and semiotic nature of a number of everyday construction products. The language of architectural drawing, although appearing to promise an infinite arena for self-projection, ultimately fails to contain and express… Read More
Abelardo Morell
6 April 2023
Abelardo Morell6 April 2023
In 2006 Abelardo Morell was invited by a collector with a Palazzo in Venice to photograph a camera obscura image of the Grand Canal in his mother’s bedroom. Morell returned to the city a year later. His host, pointing at a window in a Canaletto painting, said he knew a… Read More
MJ Long’s Doll House
31 March 2023
MJ Long’s Doll House31 March 2023
In 2018, I met the architect MJ Long at her home. Located in a building designed and constructed in the 1930s by Thomas Tait, it doubled as Long’s studio. It was formerly the home and studio of the sculptor Sir William Dick Reid; MJ Long and her husband Sandy (Colin… Read More
Álvaro Siza — An ‘Amoral’ Architect
27 March 2023
Álvaro Siza — An ‘Amoral’ Architect27 March 2023
The fact that Álvaro Siza did not write about his work or about architecture is a conscious gesture, which goes beyond the mere neutrality of city walls. What is important in Siza is not the end result or the work, hence his lack of comment. His manner, his alibis, his… Read More
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk
1 March 2023
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk1 March 2023
This is the final of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. Extrusion: Hollein in the Southwest The Austrian architect Hans Hollein, for many years a leading figure in the international avant-garde, was a student at… Read More
Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine on the Moriyama House
28 February 2023
Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine on the Moriyama House28 February 2023
– What is a House For and Bêka & Lemoine
The editors of ‘What is a House For’ (Mateusz Zaluska, Riccardo Amarri, and Matthew Bailey) have kindly allowed Drawing Matter to reproduce the following interview with Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, in which the filmmakers discuss the Moriyama House (2005) by Ryue Nishizawa, the subject of their 2017 film ‘Moriyama-San’.… Read More
About Malagueira: Siza’s Poem on Page 27 of Sketchbook 01
20 February 2023
About Malagueira: Siza’s Poem on Page 27 of Sketchbook 0120 February 2023
The following translation proposed for Álvaro Siza’s writings on page 27 of his sketchbook 01 in Drawing Matter Collections is part of an ongoing investigation into the Malagueira project at DA/UAL PhD Programme in Contemporary Architecture. Siza’s sketchbooks are a precious tool for understanding his work and interpreting his concerns.… Read More
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff
17 February 2023
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff17 February 2023
This is the third of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. ‘Aparture’: Bruce Goff in the Parched Land ‘For the Panhandle, …1956 became the seventh straight year of drouth. Except for one savage blizzard, it… Read More
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso
17 July 2023
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso17 July 2023
– Alberto Cruz
Alberto Cruz presented the principles of The Palace of Dawn and Dusk (Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso) in the Open City’s Music Room on 19 January 1981[1]. While the initial project comprised four lodges with communal rooms, courtyards, and public baths, ultimately, as Cruz describes, following a ‘poetic revelation’… Read More
landscape