Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
Ian Hamilton Finlay at Drawing Matter
06.01.2025
Ian Hamilton Finlay at Drawing Matter06.01.2025
Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and educated in Scotland from the age of six. He briefly studied at the Glasgow School of Art and joined the British Army in 1942. After the war, Finlay worked as a shepherd while producing paintings, short plays and stories. He… Read More
Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop
19.12.2024
Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop19.12.2024
– Raffael Baur and Patricia Guaita
The following text recounts the week-long drawing workshop held at Shatwell Farm in August 2024. To read the students’ reflections and view their drawings, click here. To read invited expert Sergio Ekerman’s account of the two lectures he delivered throughout the week, click here. The 2024 ENAC Summer Workshop at… Read More
Two Lectures at Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop
19.12.2024
Two Lectures at Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2024, ENAC Summer Workshop19.12.2024
The following text is a brief reflection on two lectures delivered at Shatwell Farm in August 2024 as part of the ENAC EPFL Drawing Research Platform. To read the students’ reflections and view their drawings, click here. To read an account of the week, click here. The two lectures at… Read More
Notes on the Visionary Spaces Exhibition at the Belvedere 21
16.12.2024
Notes on the Visionary Spaces Exhibition at the Belvedere 2116.12.2024
I arrive at the Belvedere 21 after visiting Walter Pichler’s famous farmhouse in Sankt Martin an der Raab, only a few days prior—it is a stiflingly hot day in Vienna and for some reason, I have chosen to walk. I arrive at the Belvedere 21 to attend the Visionary Spaces exhibition that showcases some of Walter Pichler’s works in… Read More
Cedric Price: Parc de la Villette
18.11.2024
Cedric Price: Parc de la Villette18.11.2024
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
15.11.2024
On Origins and Originality15.11.2024
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
14.11.2024
DMJ – Five Episodes from the History of Drawing Instruments14.11.2024
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
04.11.2024
In the Archive: Riefenstahl, Hitler, Ebhardt, Sironi, Brasini04.11.2024
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
L’architecture des réalités mises en scene: (re)construire Disney
28.10.2024
L’architecture des réalités mises en scene: (re)construire Disney28.10.2024
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
Goldfinger—Planning Your Neighbourhood
14.10.2024
Goldfinger—Planning Your Neighbourhood14.10.2024
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
10.10.2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 310.10.2024
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
03.10.2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 203.10.2024
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
23.09.2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 123.09.2024
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
12.09.2024
Claude Parent at Drawing Matter12.09.2024
– 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
01.08.2024
DMJ – Brunel’s Camera Lucida01.08.2024
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
22.07.2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 222.07.2024
– 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
18.07.2024
Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine18.07.2024
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
08.07.2024
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-193908.07.2024
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
25.06.2024
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter25.06.2024
– 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
20.06.2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 120.06.2024
– Mark Dorrian and Peter Wilson
This is the first part of an edited transcript of a conversation 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
10.06.2024
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
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein
29.05.2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29.05.2024
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
Impressions of the Siza Exhibition
02.12.2024
Impressions of the Siza Exhibition02.12.2024
– Sergio Kopinski Ekerman
When I was an architecture exchange student at Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto (FAUP), between 2000 and 2001, there was a legend you could knock at Álvaro Siza Vieira’s office door and end up working there as an intern—the equivalent of walking into Mount Olympus to collaborate with… Read More
sketchbook exhibition design presentation exhibition