Category: commentaries, rants & reflections
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
Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine on the Moriyama House
28.02.2023
Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine on the Moriyama House28.02.2023
– 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
20.02.2023
About Malagueira: Siza’s Poem on Page 27 of Sketchbook 0120.02.2023
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
17.02.2023
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff17.02.2023
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
Letter of Authorisation to Discuss Late Ottoman Archive Drawings as Operational Images
06.02.2023
Letter of Authorisation to Discuss Late Ottoman Archive Drawings as Operational Images06.02.2023
– Ecem Arslanay and Mina Gürsel Tabanlıoğlu
Southeastern Turkey and Northern Syria have been struck by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 7.5 tremor, killing more than 46,000 people. Ecem and Mina’s local NGO is AHBAP. Please click here if you would like to make a donation. For the past two years, our Writing Prize has… Read More
W. R. Lethaby: Philip Webb and His Work
03.02.2023
W. R. Lethaby: Philip Webb and His Work03.02.2023
This is the fifth and final text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. Philip Webb was William Lethaby’s great hero; he considered his life and work the model for an architect. Webb was a generation older than Lethaby, and the two men most… Read More
Le Corbusier: The ‘Open hand’ as an expression of freedom?
02.02.2023
Le Corbusier: The ‘Open hand’ as an expression of freedom?02.02.2023
Le Corbusier placed particular emphasis on the notion of freedom. In Où en est l’architecture?, he declares: ‘I accept a poem only if it is made of “words in freedom”’. [1] In the same text, Le Corbusier describes his conception of art as ‘individual manifestation of freedom’. [2] In Sur… Read More
Historic England Image Archive
23.01.2023
Historic England Image Archive23.01.2023
For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More
Geography of Hope: Adolfo Natalini and Superstudio
18.01.2023
Geography of Hope: Adolfo Natalini and Superstudio18.01.2023
This is the first 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’. As we descended into a World War that threatened the obliteration of decency and history, the poet Archibald Macleish, then Librarian of Congress,… Read More
The Sasada Lab
16.01.2023
The Sasada Lab16.01.2023
For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More
W. R. Lethaby: Apprenticeship and Education
13.01.2023
W. R. Lethaby: Apprenticeship and Education13.01.2023
This is the fourth text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. The building sites of London in the late nineteenth century desperately lacked adequate skills, and this need was being addressed neither on the job nor through appropriate training. The first prospectus of… Read More
Materia 4: Brick
10.01.2023
Materia 4: Brick10.01.2023
This text is the fourth 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. Coarse rectangular lumps of clay mixed with straw and water, small enough to be carried in one or two hands, are laid… Read More
The City of Design
09.01.2023
The City of Design09.01.2023
Italy has remained a federation of city-states. There are museum cities and factory cities. There is a city whose streets are made of water and another where all streets are hollowed walls. There is a city where all its inhabitants work on the manufacture of equipment for amusement parks, a… Read More
Beverly Buchanan: Here I am; I’m Still Here
15.12.2022
Beverly Buchanan: Here I am; I’m Still Here15.12.2022
For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More
Useless Terrain: The Ballynagrenia and Ballinderry Bog
07.12.2022
Useless Terrain: The Ballynagrenia and Ballinderry Bog07.12.2022
Every hectare of drained peatland emits two tonnes of carbon a year. Known peatlands only cover about 3% of the world’s land surface, but they store at least twice as much carbon as all of Earth’s standing forests. Cutting turf for fuel has been practiced for centuries, and communities have… Read More
Open Letters: Harvard GSD
02.12.2022
Open Letters: Harvard GSD02.12.2022
Drawing Matter has been enjoying Open Letters, published bi-weekly by Harvard University Graduate School Of Design, from the start. In part, this is because our own publishing initiative began at much at the same time – now ten years ago – and proceeds at the same pace, and with a little of the… Read More
On Authority
26.05.2023
On Authority26.05.2023
– Nuno Melo Sousa
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
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