Category: commentaries, rants & reflections

Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers

Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers

Nuno Melo Sousa

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

Nuno Melo Sousa: on walls

Nuno Melo Sousa

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

Nuno Melo Sousa: authority

Nuno Melo Sousa

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

On Authority

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

Nuno Melo Sousa: in cahiers

Nuno Melo Sousa: in cahiers

Nuno Melo Sousa

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

Archive Politics

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

Materia 5: Timber

Gordon Shrigley

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

Abelardo Morell

Rebecca Connor Reading

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

MJ Long’s Doll House

Elena Palacios Carral

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

Álvaro Siza — An ‘Amoral’ Architect

Eduardo Souto de Moura

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

Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk

Nicholas Olsberg

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

Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine on the Moriyama House

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