Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
Cedric Price: Parc de la Villette
18 November 2024
Cedric Price: Parc de la Villette18 November 2024
The following account looks into the drawing DMC 1438 related to Price’s Parc de la Villette competition entry, to quest for the modes in which this media object resituates his design approach of design for pleasure, not only as the evolution of his practice, but crucially as part of an… Read More
On origins and originality
15 November 2024
On origins and originality15 November 2024
The following text by Niall Hobhouse is included in the exhibition catalogue for Begin Again. Fail Better: Preliminary Drawings in Architecture. The exhibition, previously shown at the Kunstmuseum in Olten, opened at EPFL on the 5th of November and will close on the 2nd of December 2024. It includes nearly 100 drawings from… Read More
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments
14 November 2024
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments14 November 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
In the Archive: Riefenstahl, Hitler, Ebhardt, Sironi, Brasini
4 November 2024
In the Archive: Riefenstahl, Hitler, Ebhardt, Sironi, Brasini4 November 2024
– Editors
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. Premiered at this year’s La Biennale di Venezia, was Andres Veiel’s documentary on Leni Riefenstahl, the German film director known for Olympia (1936) and Triumph des Willens (1935). Framed through archival material Veil’s Riefenstahl (2024) demonstrates how her work was inextricably linked to… Read More
Goldfinger—Planning Your Neighbourhood
14 October 2024
Goldfinger—Planning Your Neighbourhood14 October 2024
At first glance Planning Your Neighbourhood appears as a series of prints in a case, and its use is unclear. This series of twenty prints was created by modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger, artist Ursula Blackwell, illustrator Shiela Hawkins, landscape architect Peter Shepheard and their assistant Martin Cobbett. Rather than solely… Read More
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 3
10 October 2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 310 October 2024
This post concludes Nicholas Olsberg’s series on William Butterfield’s Heath’s Court project, the text of which is included in his new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. ‘Sounding corridors’: entry and sequence The driveway brings us into a… Read More
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 2
3 October 2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 23 October 2024
This post continues with the second part of Nicholas Olsberg’s text on William Butterfield’s Heath’s Court project, included in his new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. ‘Cycles of the human tale’: the library The elevation of the… Read More
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 1
23 September 2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 123 September 2024
William Butterfield’s architectural practice, spanning the entire Victorian era, is the focus of Nicholas Olsberg’s new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. Over the next three weeks, Drawing Matter will reproduce a chapter within The Master Builder that focuses… Read More
Claude Parent at Drawing Matter
12 September 2024
Claude Parent at Drawing Matter12 September 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
DMJ – Brunel’s camera lucida
1 August 2024
DMJ – Brunel’s camera lucida1 August 2024
In the Drawing Matter collection there is a camera lucida that belonged to Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) (Figs 1–4,6).[1] The camera lucida is an instrument for drawing from life, patented in 1806 by the versatile English chemist and physicist William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828).[2] The term camera lucida (‘well-lit room’) is… Read More
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in conversation – Part 2
22 July 2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in conversation – Part 222 July 2024
– Mark Dorrian and Peter Wilson
This is the second part of an edited transcript of a conversion held in Thurloe Sq, London, on 25 July 2020. Peter Wilson’s exhibition ‘Indian Summer and Thereafter’ had opened at Betts Project the previous evening. Mark Dorrian: Moving on to the Villa Auto and Clandeboye projects, both were sited… Read More
Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine
18 July 2024
Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine18 July 2024
Leaving the Architectural Association and starting at Ahrends Burton and Koralek (ABK) in 1978 was a complete revelation to me. Here, instead of the layers of smudged graphite used to illustrate abstract drawings—as promoted by Dalibor Vesely for instance—graphite powder from your rotary pencil sharpener was used to shade the… Read More
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-1939
8 July 2024
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-19398 July 2024
When the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner was asked to draw up an inventory of interwar buildings that deserved to be placed on the Statutory List, the so-called ‘Pevsner 50’ that resulted was almost entirely composed of the whitest of white modernist buildings. Similarly, John Summerson argued that the only thing… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter
25 June 2024
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter25 June 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The Frank Lloyd Wright collection is of primary interest from 1936 to 1951, and especially for a small group of studies and presentations for the shaping of domestic space, dwelling within landscape, and interior fittings. There are also important isolated drawings for a prairie house, Midway Gardens, the Johnson Administration… Read More
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in conversation – Part 1
20 June 2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in conversation – Part 120 June 2024
– Mark Dorrian and Peter Wilson
This is the first part of an edited transcript of a conversion held in Thurloe Sq, London, on 25 July 2020. Peter Wilson’s exhibition ‘Indian Summer and Thereafter’ had opened at Betts Project the previous evening. Mark Dorrian: What led you to architecture to begin with, Peter? You began studying… Read More
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto
10 June 2024
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto10 June 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
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein
29 May 2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29 May 2024
This text by Matt Page will be included in the exhibition catalogue for Begin again. Fail Better: Preliminary drawings in architecture (and art). The exhibition opens on the 31st May 2024 at the Kunstmuseum Olten, and includes nearly 100 drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. More information about the exhibition… Read More
Louis-Hippolyte Lebas at Drawing Matter
27 May 2024
Louis-Hippolyte Lebas at Drawing Matter27 May 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
French architect Louis-Hippolyte Lebas (1782–1867) trained with Percier and Fontaine, whose assistant he remained for some years; working in Paris, both independently and in collaboration with Éloi Labarre and others from the mid 1820s; professor of history of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1840; and leader of an… Read More
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs
22 May 2024
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs22 May 2024
‘Geometric, rigorously drawn, and yet always signed somewhere with an asymmetrical fold or knot.’[1] While this could be a concise description of Peter Wilson’s work, it is in fact Roland Barthes writing in his book Empire of Signs (1970) about what he described as the Japanese ‘ecstasy of the package’.[2] Barthes was struck by… Read More
Architectural models and the oriental ideal of the Alhambra
20 May 2024
Architectural models and the oriental ideal of the Alhambra20 May 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
6 May 2024
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture6 May 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
In the Archive: New and Found 3
3 May 2024
In the Archive: New and Found 33 May 2024
– Editors
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. The New and Found series is an informal miscellany, which allows us to show some recent acquisitions together with material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that you may not have seen before. New There was excitement when Enzo Mari’s resin… Read More
L’architecture des réalités mises en scene: (re)construire Disney
28 October 2024
L’architecture des réalités mises en scene: (re)construire Disney28 October 2024
– Fabrizio Gallanti
Drawing Matter asked Fabrizio Gallanti, Director of the arc en rêve – centre d’architecture, for an informal commentary on the content and presentation of their current exhibition L’architecture des réalités mises en scene: (re)construire Disney, open until January 2025. We are arc en rêve. We do exhibitions. In Bordeaux, South-West of France.… Read More
DMC exhibition design presentation exhibition