Category: design methodologies
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
Hans Hollein & Spiritual Expression in Architecture
22.09.2023
Hans Hollein & Spiritual Expression in Architecture22.09.2023
The defining characteristics of modern architecture took shape against a host of disorientating shifts in the 19th century. On the theoretical side, the instantiation and development of aesthetics as an autonomous realm strained a sacred harmony between beauty, truth, and goodness. On the practical side, technological, social, and cultural advancements… Read More
Elbe and Marte
13.09.2023
Elbe and Marte13.09.2023
– Karen Lohrmann and Stefano de Martino
Elbe and Marte is the spatial and ecological adjustment of a 16th-century rural complex and experimental landscape in the Gulf of Naples. Set deep into the coastal hillside, it encompasses a massive work of geo-engineering with rock and stone walls across 30 vertical terraces. It is a survey of time… Read More
Denise Scott Brown ‘From Soane to the Strip’
01.09.2023
Denise Scott Brown ‘From Soane to the Strip’01.09.2023
The following text is an excerpt from Denise Scott Brown’s 2018 Soane Medal lecture, written by Thomas Weaver, and developed out of a series of conversations between Denise Scott Brown and Thomas Weaver in July 2018. I have never thought of myself as a photographer, only an architect and urbanist,… Read More
Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape
30.08.2023
Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape30.08.2023
This is film was made by team SHICHAI拾柴 for the exhibition ‘Drawing Landscape: Alberto Ponis,’ exhibited at Tongji University, Shanghai, 10 April—20 May 2023. It concludes a series of posts on Drawing Matter pairing team SHICHAI拾柴’s films with drawings from our collection; find these in the ‘related reading’ below.
Comins x Shatwell Tea House
25.08.2023
Comins x Shatwell Tea House25.08.2023
– Various
Similar to the way the soil, climate, cultivar, and—of course—the tea maker come together to craft distinct and flavourful teas, numerous helping hands played an important role in the journey that culminated in the process and construction of the Comins x Shatwell Tea House. The most common question visitors have… Read More
Capilla Pajaritos
24.08.2023
Capilla Pajaritos24.08.2023
The following text was written by Alberto Cruz as an account of the project for a small chapel outside of Santiago (1952–3; first published in Spanish in 1954). It describes an unfolding process of design, framed around the guiding principles of observation, act, and, form—the key tenets of Cruz’s architectural… Read More
Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield
21.08.2023
Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield21.08.2023
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. In… Read More
DMJ – The Art of Measuring Images: Albrecht Meydenbauer and the Invention of the Photographic Survey
18.08.2023
DMJ – The Art of Measuring Images: Albrecht Meydenbauer and the Invention of the Photographic Survey18.08.2023
In 1868, the little-known project manager and government surveyor Albrecht Meydenbauer (1834 – 1921) climbed to the top of the Rotes Rathaus in Berlin to shoot the first 360-degree photographic record of the city. In contrast to the idealistic, hyper-real clarity of a more famous painted panorama of Berlin made… Read More
Chloethiel Woodard Smith
16.08.2023
Chloethiel Woodard Smith16.08.2023
In June 2023 Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Professor of Art History at University College Dublin, gave a talk about American modernist architect and urban planner Chloethiel Woodard Smith. Part of the series ‘Rethinking Architectural Legacies’ at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the talk was titled ‘How to Succeed as a Woman: Chloethiel Woodard… Read More
Patrick Gwynne: Colour by Numbers
07.08.2023
Patrick Gwynne: Colour by Numbers07.08.2023
Preferring the sterile white look, most British modernist architects shied away from colour, considering it to be the domain of the interior decorator—the ‘woman’s role’. But Patrick Gwynne (1913–2003) always loved to use colour in his designs, with sensitivity and knowledge. As a budding architect in the mid-1930s, Gwynne purchased… Read More
What Does a Drawing Sound Like?
20.07.2023
What Does a Drawing Sound Like?20.07.2023
Drawings in Mechanization Takes Command almost clank. Designs for a threshing machine in the 1770s, plans for a Mechanical Reaper submitted to the British Patent Office in 1811, and Cyrus McCormick’s subsequent design for the American farmer, all included iron wheels, heavy plate, and flailing chains. Those drawings selected by… Read More
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso
17.07.2023
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso17.07.2023
Alberto Cruz presented the principles of The Palace of Dawn and Dusk (Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso) in the Open City’s Music Room on 19 January 1981[1]. While the initial project comprised four lodges with communal rooms, courtyards, and public baths, ultimately, as Cruz describes, following a ‘poetic revelation’… Read More
Learning From Machine Learning, on designer trees and architectural historiographies of the digital
11.07.2023
Learning From Machine Learning, on designer trees and architectural historiographies of the digital11.07.2023
What does it mean for scholars to collaborate with contemporary knowledge machines? In this article, Sylvia Lavin reflects on the failures, successes, and potentialities of a machine learning tool designed to identify trees in architectural drawings. This project, which she initiated in 2022, was undertaken by Princeton University and the… Read More
Building as Drawing: The Cowshed (2021) at Shatwell Farm
07.07.2023
Building as Drawing: The Cowshed (2021) at Shatwell Farm07.07.2023
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.… Read More
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse
05.07.2023
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse05.07.2023
The following text is reproduced from The Hybrid Practitioner: Building, Teaching, Researching Architecture (2022), edited by Caroline Voet, Eireen Schreurs, and Helen Thomas. The publication is available in print or as an ebook, here. You can find Joseph Bedford on Instagram here. From the 1970s through the 1990s, many architects… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight26.05.2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. They dance.They stand.They stare.They bend.They underline.They comply.They don’t comply.They question.They agree.They dismiss.They provoke.They ignore. Each and every one of them keeps a continuous movement between what… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers26.05.2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. First, there were a couple of tense drawings.One, two, three. At the very third second, it quickly escalated to a nonstop dry pastel scratch on A2… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers26.05.2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. 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
Gathered Moments: Asplund’s Villa Snellman
28.09.2023
Gathered Moments: Asplund’s Villa Snellman28.09.2023
– Andrew Carr
Virginia Woolf’s use of short stories to form larger works, and her bracketing of inner discourse with physical objects and phenomena, suggest a similar episodic approach to architectural composition. Discrete moments are assembled to form a whole which is often held within an overarching temporal structure. This structure does not… Read More
DMC plan domestic literature