Category: design methodologies
Protected: Printed Matters
13.05.2026
Protected: Printed Matters 13.05.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter
07.05.2026
Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter07.05.2026
– João Miguel Couto Duarte and Maria João Moreira Soares
In 1950, Le Corbusier began designing the Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. Le Corbusier wrote that it represented ‘Liberté’ (freedom).[1] Totally free architecture. A veritable phenomenon of visual acoustics. That freedom affected one visitor in 1955: ‘the sacred building stood in the landscape like an extraterrestrial object, leaving… Read More
Protected: Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing
27.04.2026
Protected: Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing27.04.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Principle of ‘Reach’
27.04.2026
The Principle of ‘Reach’27.04.2026
In the home economics theory of domestic space, a necessary and pivotal condition allowing the homemaker to work out and practice more ‘efficient’ routines, and thereby decrease her domestic drudgery, was the design of home interior. This included the arrangement of the objects of daily use. Conceptualising the space as… Read More
Protected: Collection Guide: Cedric Price
23.04.2026
Protected: Collection Guide: Cedric Price23.04.2026
– Editors
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
A House to Live With: 16 Variations by Dom Hans van der Laan and His Companions
15.04.2026
A House to Live With: 16 Variations by Dom Hans van der Laan and His Companions15.04.2026
Walking around the exhibition Beauty of the Earth: The Art of May, Jane and William Morris in Winchester library, observing first hand their devout interest in nature and its depiction in books and fabrics, I began to reflect on a similar devotion that Hans van der Laan and his pupils show… Read More
On Cedric Price
02.04.2026
On Cedric Price02.04.2026
Cedric Price’s thinking and work have had a very particular influence on my work, in the sense that some fundamental choices I have made as an architect have been deeply influenced by his philosophy. In this sense, it seems to me that Cedric Price was one of the few architects… Read More
Working (with) Drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection
27.03.2026
Working (with) Drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection27.03.2026
– Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Maria Mitsoula
The following text was first published in Stoà 14 – SCUOLE, SYLLABUS / SCHOOLS, BRIEF (Autumn 2025). * Drawing Matter and its Collection The Drawing Matter Collection, carefully assembled by collector, curator, and critic Niall Hobhouse over thirty years, comprises around 20,000 objects—including architectural drawings, models, photographs, and sketchbooks, among others—from around the… Read More
Sam Jacob: On Collage (Talk, Workshop + Exhibition)
12.03.2026
Sam Jacob: On Collage (Talk, Workshop + Exhibition)12.03.2026
– Editors
In early February, Drawing Matter organised a series of public events with the architect Sam Jacob exploring the uses of collage in architectural representations. On the Friday (6 February), Sam gave a talk on his personal interests in collage, weaving a narrative from Richard Hamilton’s Just what is it that… Read More
New Views on Vanbrugh and his Drawings
02.03.2026
New Views on Vanbrugh and his Drawings02.03.2026
This text is published to mark the opening of John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture at Sir John Soane’s Museum (4 March–28 June 2026), co-curated by Charles Saumarez Smith and Roz Barr. More information about the exhibition can be found here. In the summer of 1982, when I was at… Read More
Het woonpalazzo – The Residential Palazzo
16.02.2026
Het woonpalazzo – The Residential Palazzo16.02.2026
Open any book by a Dutch architect and you are bound to come across H. P. Berlage—the forefather from whom sprang everything, albeit indirectly, from the Amsterdam School to Der Stijl and who is revered for his contribution at all scales from the details of his buildings to his town… Read More
James Gowan’s Trafalgar Road & East Hanningfield
12.02.2026
James Gowan’s Trafalgar Road & East Hanningfield12.02.2026
– Vera Okodugha and Ana Francisco Sutherland
To mark the publication of Ana Francisco Sutherland’s remarkable compendium of the modern buildings of Greenwich and Blackheath, this post is presented as a ‘project scrapbook’ that traces two of James Gowan’s social housing projects, Trafalgar Road, London, built between 1964 and 1968, and East Hanningfield, Essex, finished in 1978.… Read More
Drawing Research Platform, London, 2025, ENAC Summer Workshop
15.01.2026
Drawing Research Platform, London, 2025, ENAC Summer Workshop15.01.2026
– Raffael Baur, Patricia Guaita and Matthew Wells
For a fourth year, Drawing Matter hosted students from ENAC EPFL for a week-long workshop on survey drawings—this time not in a Somerset farmyard, but in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 400 yards east of the archive. The workshop was organised by Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur in collaboration with Drawing Matter,… Read More
Tracing Shadows: A Workshop Primer
05.01.2026
Tracing Shadows: A Workshop Primer05.01.2026
Here, Mark Dorrian examines the theoretical history of the shadow and its evolving role in architectural drawing. The text acts as a word-and-image primer for the third colloquium event, jointly hosted by the RIBA and V&A Drawings Collections, and Drawing Matter, which will take place later this month—a day of… Read More
The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards
01.12.2025
The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards01.12.2025
Drawing Matter is pleased to publish the following text to mark the opening of ‘Come Deck the Halls!’, an exhibition celebrating the work of Alison and Peter Smithson at Roca London Gallery (5 December 2025 – 31 January 2026). The exhibition provides an insight into their architectural thinking through the… Read More
Drawing as Method and Process
28.11.2025
Drawing as Method and Process28.11.2025
Modus is a preparatory school for studies in architecture, art, and design, as well as a sustained investigation into the potentialities of drawing. Here, drawing is used to pose questions, uncover spatial and formal possibilities, and articulate new architectural statements. The school is founded on the belief that while architecture… Read More
Tony Fretton: Everything I Saw Became Important (Exhibition + Talk)
24.11.2025
Tony Fretton: Everything I Saw Became Important (Exhibition + Talk)24.11.2025
– Editors
On Friday 7 November, Drawing Matter welcomed architects Tony Fretton and Benjamin Machin to the archive for a conversation to open the exhibition ‘Tony Fretton: Everything I Saw Became Important’. Anchored by seven ‘artefacts’ now in the Drawing Matter Collection, the conversation explores the roles of drawings, photography, and sketchbooks… Read More
The Architect of Impossible Physics
06.11.2025
The Architect of Impossible Physics06.11.2025
More than once, when describing the processes involved in creating these drawings, my listener has responded with two words in particular: loading and channelling. I thought I would and should elaborate. The initial first gestures, lines, squiggles, scratches, smudges and randomisations of the mark making inform the start to the work in these… Read More
John Hejduk: Means, Ends
09.10.2025
John Hejduk: Means, Ends09.10.2025
Peter Eisenman was wrong… It is architecture, even if you can’t ‘get in it.’[1] But he was also right… ‘The tradition of the architect-writer is well precedented in the history of architecture.’[2] It might remain a question without an answer, though it is curious that on large, the once hyphenated… Read More
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space
11.09.2025
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space 11.09.2025
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space by Paul Carter mediates between graphic form and text, movement-tracking, and place-making to delineate the interstices of public space: what escapes its formal description and what falls outside official design. The book responds to pertinent concerns about the interface between the designers of public… Read More
DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge
18.08.2025
DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge18.08.2025
As work on site at the Orphanage (1956-1960) neared completion, Aldo van Eyck was busy exploring and expanding the reach of his ideas through a number of interlaced and mutually generative projects, editorial of Forum magazine (1959-63), contributions to the reorganisation and ultimate dissolution of CIAM (1954-1960) and the design of a… Read More
Typology: A conversation
13.08.2025
Typology: A conversation13.08.2025
– Richard Hall, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner
In Spring 2025, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner corresponded about books which each had recently published that deal with the issue of ‘type’ and the role of drawing in typological work.[1] Hans invited Richard Hall to join the conversation, widening the discussion to three generations working in three… Read More
Maristella Casciato on Le Corbusier’s Grille Capitol Booklet (Video)
11.07.2025
Maristella Casciato on Le Corbusier’s Grille Capitol Booklet (Video)11.07.2025
Maristella Casciato, Senior Curator and Head of Architecture Special Collections at the Getty Reseach Institute in Los Angeles, takes us through Le Corbusier’s 1952 Chandigarh Grille Capitol booklet.
Scaletales: Dr Franz Gibarian’s Lecture
08.05.2026
Scaletales: Dr Franz Gibarian’s Lecture08.05.2026
– William Firebrace
The following fictional text was extracted from William Firebrace’s Scaletales (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln, 2026). The book investigates the various meanings of the word scale through a story about two elderly women on a journey from Finland through central Europe to the Black Sea. They… Read More
publication text sketch