Category: design methodologies
Aldo Rossi at Drawing Matter
20.03.2025
Aldo Rossi at Drawing Matter20.03.2025
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
Aldo Rossi started as a painter, working in the tradition and model of Mario Sironi, whose metaphysical landscapes echo throughout his later work. Although his architectural career commenced with writing, editing and teaching, drawing—especially drawing with colour—remained the principal means to explore and communicate his ideas, and to evoke the… Read More
Protected: Pembroke’s Archives
17.03.2025
Protected: Pembroke’s Archives17.03.2025
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
On Axonometric Drawing
27.02.2025
On Axonometric Drawing27.02.2025
In the work of our practice, since the very start, we have placed a great deal of attention towards drawing and representation. The recent exhibition in Antwerp—The Urban Villa—is a good example of our work, which is based on the combination of design with research; both of these two activities… Read More
Drawing on Ideas
17.02.2025
Drawing on Ideas17.02.2025
In 1972, when Peter Eisenman’s House II was published in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, the editors confused a photograph of the built work for an image of a model. The house was located in Southern Vermont, and had been shot from a low angle against a uniform grey sky with a snow-covered hillside… Read More
Ernö Goldfinger: Westminster Bank
11.02.2025
Ernö Goldfinger: Westminster Bank11.02.2025
Looking at Ernö Goldfinger’s drawing for Westminster Bank at Alexander Fleming House in London, the first thing that stands out is its grid-like form. The frame of the building and its windows form a grid, and a grid within a grid, respectively. A peek inside the carefully drawn ground-floor windows… Read More
Dogma: Urban Villa – From Speculation to Collaboration
23.01.2025
Dogma: Urban Villa – From Speculation to Collaboration23.01.2025
On the north edge of Brussels city centre, the recently refurbished Gare Maritime was once Europe’s largest goods station. Located in the former industrial area known as ‘Tour & Taxis’, the vast nineteenth-century roof now shelters offices, indoor retail boulevards and enough left over space to host markets and events,… Read More
Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop
19.12.2024
Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop19.12.2024
– Raffael Baur and Patricia Guaita
The following text recounts the week-long drawing workshop held at Shatwell Farm in August 2024. To read the students’ reflections and view their drawings, click here. To read invited expert Sergio Ekerman’s account of the two lectures he delivered throughout the week, click here. The 2024 ENAC Summer Workshop at… Read More
Two Lectures at Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop
19.12.2024
Two Lectures at Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop19.12.2024
The following text is a brief reflection on two lectures delivered at Shatwell Farm in August 2024 as part of the ENAC EPFL Drawing Research Platform. To read the students’ reflections and view their drawings, click here. To read an account of the week, click here. The two lectures at… Read More
Peris+Toral Arquitectes: Modulus Matrix
13.12.2024
Peris+Toral Arquitectes: Modulus Matrix13.12.2024
‘We were asked for one image that illustrated our thinking. The half that’s in white shows the final floor plan. The black shows the process, superimposing all the possibilities as we developed the project, exploring different options until the final crystallised version.’ Peris+Toral Arquitectes have been awarded the RIBA International… Read More
José Oubrerie, In Memoriam
21.11.2024
José Oubrerie, In Memoriam21.11.2024
Very few contemporary buildings take nearly 50 years to be finished. Just this fact tells us a lot about the intensity, resilience, passion and patience of José Oubrerie, who passed away on March 10th, at 91. Aged only 27 when joining the atelier Le Corbusier in 1959, the church of… Read More
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments
14.11.2024
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments14.11.2024
Instruments of Building in Ancient Rome Vitruvius, writing in the first century BC, portrays being an architect (architectus) in ancient Rome as a daunting task. The knowledge of the architect, he notes, must encompass the understanding of geometry, engineering, optics, history, philosophy, astronomy, and even music and medicine. At a… Read More
Fuglsang Kunstmuseum: Facts and Interpretation in Staging a Museum
11.11.2024
Fuglsang Kunstmuseum: Facts and Interpretation in Staging a Museum11.11.2024
The following text was first published in OASE #111: Staging the Museum (2022). Drawing Matter would like to thank Tony Fretton and the issue’s editors Aslı Çiçek, Jantje Engels, and Maarten Liefooghe, for allowing us to reproduce the text. Purchase a copy of OASE #111 here. Fuglsang Kunstmuseum is located on the… Read More
OMA: Rem Koolhaas—Initiative
31.10.2024
OMA: Rem Koolhaas—Initiative31.10.2024
This is the sixth and final post, in the series titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
DMJ – Devices of Dream-Like Precision: Tracing the Streets of Kyoto using Photogrammetry and Layered Drawing
24.10.2024
DMJ – Devices of Dream-Like Precision: Tracing the Streets of Kyoto using Photogrammetry and Layered Drawing24.10.2024
There have been frequent attempts to represent the city of Kyoto as a coherent whole, from the cloud-swept panorama of the 17th-century Rakuchu Rakugai zu (Scenes In and Around Kyoto) folding screen paintings to the digital diorama of the GIS-driven Virtual Kyoto Project. Whilst these portraits of the city have relied on… Read More
Drawing Without Erasing
21.10.2024
Drawing Without Erasing21.10.2024
The following text first appeared in Drawing without Erasing and Other Essays, by Flores & Prats (Barcelona: Puente editores, 2023), 16-23. Not so long ago, a journalist interviewed us for the British magazine Architecture Today, and the resulting article was called ‘Dirty Drawings’. This suggestive title might bring to mind a… Read More
Claude Parent at Drawing Matter
12.09.2024
Claude Parent at Drawing Matter12.09.2024
– Editors and Chloé Parent
Drawing Matter is honoured to have recently added to the collection a group of 60 drawings by Claude Parent, which were selected in very generous collaboration with Chloé Parent and the Claude Parent Archives. In the wider context of the collection, we see these drawings as offering unique access to… Read More
Notes on the 2024 Architecture Summer School
06.09.2024
Suddenly This View
05.09.2024
Suddenly This View05.09.2024
Suddenly This View begun as a series of architectural models and evolved into a collection of model photography. It is an ongoing project investigating everyday spaces, exploring how architectural models and their derivative creations can be used to convey spatial narratives. The subjects of Suddenly This View are everyday buildings… Read More
OMA: Big Competitions—Reorienting the Modern Project
29.08.2024
OMA: Big Competitions—Reorienting the Modern Project29.08.2024
This is the fourth post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
26.08.2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas26.08.2024
– Erin Besler, Marshall Brown, Sylvia Lavin and Michael Meredith
The small exhibition Fabric Object, curated by Michael Meredith and exhibited at the Princeton University School of Architecture between 7th March and 3rd May 2024, brought together seven projects from the early career of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects. Short texts written by the Princeton School of Architecture faculty: Stan… Read More
Drawings as Cosmovisions
12.08.2024
Drawings as Cosmovisions12.08.2024
My decision to become an architect was triggered by my love of drawing. But during my university years in the 1990s, when digital techniques became widespread, nothing was more distant than the relationship between architecture and manual drawing. Without hand-drawn images, the connection between the body and ideas was gone,… Read More
Resistance and the ‘Architecture of Pessimism’: John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate
05.08.2024
Resistance and the ‘Architecture of Pessimism’: John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate05.08.2024
Many people reach a point in their lives at which they realise that they should protest the status quo. Some people make the realisation but remain frustrated, stuck, or blocked from enacting the necessary change. How do we face, name, and act according to our most fundamental realisations and what… Read More
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
25.07.2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas25.07.2024
– Darell Wayne Fields, Anda French, Tessa Kelly, Paul Lewis and Michael Meredith
The small exhibition Fabric Object, curated by Michael Meredith and exhibited at the Princeton University School of Architecture between 7th March and 3rd May 2024, brought together seven projects from the early career of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects. Short texts written by the Princeton School of Architecture faculty: Stan… Read More
Elizabeth Chesterton & Tomorrow Town: A New Town Thesis by Architectural Association Students
10.03.2025
Elizabeth Chesterton & Tomorrow Town: A New Town Thesis by Architectural Association Students10.03.2025
– Mary Mitchell
In 1999, I was an undergraduate at Edinburgh University studying Architectural History when I undertook a work placement at the university archives. Here I was asked to help organise an uncatalogued collection received from the Patrick Geddes Centre at the Outlook Tower. Within this collection were 12 portfolios. Portfolio 7… Read More
student work theoretical & imaginary civic & municipal housing urban form DMC