Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
Quinta da Malagueira
11.08.2023
Quinta da Malagueira11.08.2023
In this short text Pier Vittorio Aureli reflects on Quinta da Malagueira housing project in what he sees as a potential convergence between formal principals and political intentions. Quinta da Malagueira is perhaps the last great ‘social housing project’. That is, it is the last great architectural contribution to the… Read More
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso
17.07.2023
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso17.07.2023
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
Building as Drawing: The Cowshed (2021) at Shatwell Farm
07.07.2023
Building as Drawing: The Cowshed (2021) at Shatwell Farm07.07.2023
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
05.07.2023
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse05.07.2023
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
04.07.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate04.07.2023
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
13.06.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign13.06.2023
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.
09.06.2023
Hardman & Co.09.06.2023
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
06.06.2023
Through a Glass Darkly06.06.2023
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
01.06.2023
The First Exercise, One Door and One Window01.06.2023
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
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight26.05.2023
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
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers26.05.2023
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
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers26.05.2023
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
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on walls26.05.2023
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
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority26.05.2023
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
26.05.2023
On Authority26.05.2023
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
25.04.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: in cahiers25.04.2023
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
21.04.2023
Archive Politics21.04.2023
– 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
18.04.2023
Materia 5: Timber18.04.2023
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
06.04.2023
Abelardo Morell06.04.2023
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
31.03.2023
MJ Long’s Doll House31.03.2023
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
27.03.2023
Álvaro Siza — An ‘Amoral’ Architect27.03.2023
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
01.03.2023
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk01.03.2023
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
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension
28.08.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension28.08.2023
– Adrian Dannatt
Liza Fior, whose phone was used to take these snaps (I still refuse the portable-telephone obligation), was particularly taken by this hook for the garage door, the way it hangs, the perhaps deliberate chipping into the stone, ‘I am sure he planned it’. That minute attention to the smallest thing,… Read More
St Mary's Grove (series) DMC detail domestic