Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
Soane’s Designs for Combe House, Continued
30 July 2020
Soane’s Designs for Combe House, Continued30 July 2020
When Drawing Matter recently reproduced a preliminary ground plan for Combe House near Gittisham, Devon, by John Soane, I had a moment’s sudden recollection. Ptolemy Dean’s penetrating analysis of this precious if battered sheet of paper – entirely in the astonishingly fluid and energetic hand of the architect – set me to search… Read More
Ove Arup: Engineering the World
12 June 2020
Ove Arup: Engineering the World12 June 2020
By Hugh Pearman
My introduction to the work of Ove Arup, the great Anglo-Danish structural engineer whose firm made both the Sydney Opera House and the Pompidou Centre in Paris buildable, came over the course of three years as I walked, almost every day, across his Kingsgate foot-bridge in Durham. This is the… Read More
In the Archive
20 April 2020
In the Archive20 April 2020
By Edouard Cabay, Richard Hall and Emma Rutherford
In the Archive recreates the experience of a visit to the Drawing Matter collection at Shatwell Farm in Somerset, UK. Each episode begins by inviting a visitor (or visitors) to select a small number of drawings from the collection and to write a reflective text – at times written on… Read More
Origins in Translation
20 January 2020
Origins in Translation20 January 2020
By Mari Lending
Broken bits of ancient architecture piled up in the foreground of a printed page is a topos in the canon of architectural publications. An early example takes place in the frontispiece of Sebastiano Serlio’s book on antiquities. Produced for the first edition of the third book, written in Italian and published in… Read More
Marie-José Van Hee: Drawn Closer
2 January 2020
Marie-José Van Hee: Drawn Closer2 January 2020
Towards the end of my architectural studies in the late 1960s I moved into a little house near the Prinsenhof neighbourhood of Ghent. My neighbours were Ghent people, and my landlord owned the whole block. Every month he would collect rent, and although he didn’t talk to most people, he… Read More
Grandorge’s Pavilion
21 July 2019
Grandorge’s Pavilion21 July 2019
The timber pavilion shown in the film is being transported to its third incarnation, and from inside another shed to its second locale in Shatwell farmyard, where it will serve as a new temporary office for the Timber Frame Company Ltd. The TFC constructed the Peter Smithson Obelisk that has… Read More
Madelon Vriesendorp and Rem Koolhaas at Van Rooy Gallery, 1980
23 October 2018
Madelon Vriesendorp and Rem Koolhaas at Van Rooy Gallery, 198023 October 2018
On 1 October 1980, at the height of postmodernism, Luce van Rooy opened her gallery in Amsterdam, around the corner from the Stedelijk Museum. [1] In a recent interview van Rooy reflects on the history of the gallery: the idea – what she calls a gallery for ‘architecture and related… Read More
Michael Graves: Fargo-Moorehead Cultural Bridge
15 October 2018
Michael Graves: Fargo-Moorehead Cultural Bridge15 October 2018
The Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Bridge is an unrealised project combining infrastructural and cultural programs: a vehicular bridge between two cities over the Red River, a performing arts building in Fargo, North Dakota, the Red River Valley heritage interpretive centre in Moorhead, Minnesota, and at the centre over the river itself, an… Read More
Conjunction and Incongruity
1 September 2018
Conjunction and Incongruity1 September 2018
By Polly Gould
The word archive, meaning both the collection of documents and the building that houses them, is doubled in its meaning and it is not necessarily clear which one precedes the other. Drawing Matter Open Day highlighted in interesting ways the relation of causality between building and drawing as document or… Read More
letters from nicholas hawksmoor and standford white
30 April 2018
letters from nicholas hawksmoor and standford white30 April 2018
Shatwell DrawingScape
29 January 2018
Shatwell DrawingScape29 January 2018
By Ana Araujo
This year a group of 12 students from the Intermediate School at the Architectural Association, London, are developing proposals for the Shatwell site. They take inspiration from the Drawing Matter collection to create exhibition spaces to display and celebrate the culture of drawing. The work ranges from speculative interpretations of… Read More
Startha Éagsula: Grafton Architects on Paulo Mendes da Rocha
20 October 2020
Startha Éagsula: Grafton Architects on Paulo Mendes da Rocha20 October 2020
By Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara
This text has been excerpted from Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories (2020), a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. We… Read More
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