Category: design methodologies
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
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade
28.06.2024
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade28.06.2024
This is the third 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
27.06.2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas27.06.2024
– Stan Allen, Beatriz Colomina, Michael Meredith, Jesse Reiser and Mark Wigley
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
On the Street
14.06.2024
On the Street14.06.2024
The Drawing Matter editors have been enjoying Eddie Heathcote’s On the Street: In-Between Architecture and wanted to share the following short extracts. Draining Against the wall under the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome is a strange object, looking a little like a pancake with… Read More
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto
10.06.2024
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto10.06.2024
The design of Casa a Diacceto responds to the principle of ‘discontinuity’ theorised by Lapo Binazzi at the beginning of the 1970s: architecture can only be thought of and realised in fragments and pieces, there is no longer a coherent unity. The pieces are never invented, but are taken from… Read More
DMJ – Burning Drawing
06.06.2024
DMJ – Burning Drawing06.06.2024
This article documents a series of material studies of prepared surfaces that use laser cutters as instruments of drawing—and, at times, of weathering. They are part of a study that explores, through texts and images, the role that islands have played as topoi of imagination and experimentation. I begin these island stories… Read More
The GSD Sketching Group and the Call for Sketchbooks Exhibition
03.06.2024
The GSD Sketching Group and the Call for Sketchbooks Exhibition03.06.2024
The GSD Sketching Group brings together the Harvard Graduate School of Design community to explore and sketch their surroundings. This student group was founded in February 2022 by Olivia Champ Tremml and myself, with the goal of dignifying hand drawing within the design professions and to strengthen its relevance in… Read More
Architectural Models and the Oriental Ideal of the Alhambra
20.05.2024
Architectural Models and the Oriental Ideal of the Alhambra20.05.2024
The Alhambra architectural models reflect the circumstances in which they were created, during the last years of the Romantic movement, when artists and patrons were fascinated by the diffuse idea of the ‘Orient’, somewhat embodied by the Alhambra. This part-myth, part-real palace was the ultimate destination for Romantic travellers and… Read More
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture
06.05.2024
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture06.05.2024
What does the bozzetto that the young Giuseppe Terragni made in 1926, together with Pietro Lingeri, for the competition for the Monumento ai Caduti (War Memorial) in Como have to tell us? It speaks to us of the complexity of its creator, a complexity that Terragni shares with Italian art… Read More
James Stirling, and the Industrialization of Architecture?
26.04.2024
James Stirling, and the Industrialization of Architecture?26.04.2024
James Stirling’s presentation drawing from 1957 to a faculty of engineers might seem strangely familiar to contemporary architects. A section of a box, showing the structure, services, and how people might dwell inside—it almost anticipates the prefabricated modular construction architects are now being asked to design. Only a few years… Read More
OMA: London—Foreplay
19.04.2024
OMA: London—Foreplay19.04.2024
This is the first 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
Design Drawings Damage Atlas (2023)
15.04.2024
Design Drawings Damage Atlas (2023)15.04.2024
Snap, crackle, pop. Oh, that horrible sound of unravelling a roll of architectural drawings on old dried-up tracing paper from the nineteenth century. Slowly unfurling the brown brittle sheet, it cracks and shatters, little bits drop off in flakes, littering the table and floor like confetti. The experience feels like… Read More
Connor Street: Made by Many Hands
18.03.2024
Connor Street: Made by Many Hands18.03.2024
The following text is the fifth and final in a series by architect Kieran Hawkins, Director of Cairn, tracing the design and construction of an extension to a Victorian House in East London, recounting the everyday realities of the project and, in the green text, the broader environmental issues incumbent on architects to address. The texts have… Read More
The Animated Wall: A Fragile Vigour
14.03.2024
The Animated Wall: A Fragile Vigour14.03.2024
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. A… Read More
Artful Trades: Into a Market of Consumables
06.03.2024
Artful Trades: Into a Market of Consumables06.03.2024
The following text is an excerpt from the guide that accompanied the exhibition ‘PRINT READY DRAWINGS: Composites, Layers, and Paste-ups, 1950-1989’, installed at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles between 11 November 2023 – 4 February 2024, and curated by Sarah Hearne. Despite predictions of the… Read More
Simon Fraser University
01.02.2024
Simon Fraser University01.02.2024
This text is an excerpt from Arthur Erickson on Learning Systems, co-published by Concordia University Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture where the Arthur Erickson Archive is held. The text is reproduced with the kind permission of the Estate of Arthur Erickson. Recalling distant events is not easy, but those years two… Read More
DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras
19.01.2024
DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras19.01.2024
Is distance the raw material of architecture? The early work of Itsuko Hasegawa seems to address this question. In her own words, these projects allowed human beings and architecture to ‘come close and react to each other’, by setting up ‘long distances’. She developed an array of representation techniques through… Read More
Visualizing the Renaissance Worksite and the problems of graphic translation
17.01.2024
Visualizing the Renaissance Worksite and the problems of graphic translation 17.01.2024
– Jarne Geenens and Elizabeth Merrill
Francesco di Giorgio’s autograph manuscript of machine design, the Opusculum de architectura is among the most enigmatic records of early modern architecture.[1] Dedicated to Duke Federico da Montefeltro, the compact vellum manuscript celebrates the art and ingenuity of technical design, while simultaneously capturing the energy and ambition of the fabled… Read More
Guy Debord—An Art of War
29.11.2023
Guy Debord—An Art of War29.11.2023
– Laurence Le Bras and Emmanuel Guy
The following is an extract from the book Emmanuel Guy, Laurence Le Bras, and Bibliothèque Nationale De France, Guy Debord: Un Art de La Guerre (Editions Gallimard, 2013), pp. 92–96 published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Guy Debord: an art of war’, presented by the Bibliothèque nationale de France on the François-Mitterrand… Read More
Heinz Isler: Natural Hills on Different Edge Lines
14.11.2023
Heinz Isler: Natural Hills on Different Edge Lines14.11.2023
I first encountered Heinz Isler’s thin reinforced concrete shells when I saw his presentation ‘Third Decade of Structural Shells’ at the thirtieth anniversary symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), in Madrid, in September 1989. This was the first time I saw his inspirational drawing ‘Natural Hills on… Read More
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers
09.11.2023
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers09.11.2023
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Manufacture of Architecture: Joseph Paxton and the Development of the Great Stove
09.11.2023
The Manufacture of Architecture: Joseph Paxton and the Development of the Great Stove09.11.2023
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. Joseph… Read More
Connor Street: Made by Many Hands
03.11.2023
Connor Street: Made by Many Hands03.11.2023
The following text is the first in a series by architect Kieran Hawkins, Director of Cairn, tracing the design and construction of an extension to a Victorian House in East London, recounting the everyday realities of the project and, in the green text, the broader environmental issues incumbent on architects to address. The texts have been developed… Read More
Watchful Solitude: John Hejduk and Venice
15.07.2024
Watchful Solitude: John Hejduk and Venice15.07.2024
– Marina Correia
The Thirteen Watchtowers of Cannaregio (with Waiting House) and House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate were conceived as an urban ensemble and laid the foundation for the later phase of John Hejduk’s work, which he described as an ‘architecture of pessimism’, and encompasses his best-known projects, such as… Read More
Perspective sketch publication theoretical & imaginary urban form