Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
Alberto Ponis: Studio di Yasmin
23.06.2023
Alberto Ponis: Studio di Yasmin23.06.2023
This is the first of a series of posts pairing films made by team SHICHAI拾柴 with drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. The films, of houses designed by Alberto Ponis on Sardinia, were made for the exhibition ‘Drawing Landscape: Alberto Ponis,’ exhibited at Tongji University, Shanghai, 10 April—20 May 2023.… Read More
Álvaro Siza: A Vertical Dream
21.06.2023
Álvaro Siza: A Vertical Dream21.06.2023
– António Choupina and Álvaro Siza
In this short video, António Choupina and Álvaro Siza discuss a sketch for an imaginary skyscraper from Caderno 32 (1979), now in the Drawing Matter Collection. Siza describes his interest in Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Mile-High Illinois’ or ‘Sky City’ tower (1957), and his work for Rogério de Azevedo on the… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign
13.06.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign13.06.2023
When my parents bought the house in 1955—for £1,000—one of the first things Trevor did was design this distinctive gap in the wall of the front garden, a modest modernist castle crenelation. This was deliberately aligned with the edge of the house, on a line with the front steps, so… Read More
Hardman & Co.
09.06.2023
Hardman & Co.09.06.2023
My interest in seeing the Hardman & Co. drawings at Drawing Matter was quite personally motivated as I feel a connection to the company. Partially, because I come from Birmingham where the company was based, and because I visited the studios informally in the 1980s with my parents. I was… Read More
Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architektur’
12.05.2023
Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architektur’12.05.2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. In January 1917, the architect Bruno… Read More
Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop
02.05.2023
Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop02.05.2023
– Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh
This audio recording documents a workshop on architects’ drawings exploring the relationship between form, space and programme. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live… Read More
DMJ 1 – The Geological Imagination
28.04.2023
DMJ 1 – The Geological Imagination28.04.2023
– Mark Dorrian and Kurt Forster
DMJournal–Architecture and Representation is a new peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the exploration of practices, histories and material cultures of drawing in architecture and related fields. The first issue The Geological Imagination has now been published. Purchase Issue 1 / Purchase a subscription to Issues 1–3 Editors’ Introduction Sir John Soane imagined turning into stone. The episode… Read More
Accademia Bridge Proposals: Venice Biennale 1985
28.04.2023
Accademia Bridge Proposals: Venice Biennale 198528.04.2023
– Editors
This project scrapbook was prompted by Drawing Matter’s recent acquisition of drawings by Peter Wilson and Luc Deleu, made in response to Aldo Rossi’s ‘Progetto Venezia’ brief for the 1985 Venice Biennale, which invited proposals for a new Accademia Bridge to replace the wooden one constructed in the 1930s. Wilson… Read More
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia
26.04.2023
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia26.04.2023
In the years prior to the commencement of his major built works, Bridgebuilding No.4 Ponte dell’Accademia holds a critical position within the formative projects of the architect Peter Wilson. The design was prepared in response to an open international architecture competition that was launched under Aldo Rossi’s directorship of the… Read More
T.O.P. Office and the Accademia Bridge
24.04.2023
T.O.P. Office and the Accademia Bridge24.04.2023
In a way, this project was architecturally ‘ready-made’. Our proposal for the Accademia Bridge can best be seen as an example of recycling and reuse. Formally, it sublimates what is available from a limitation of resources and materials. In the concept lies a wink to the (still naive in my… Read More
Archive Politics
21.04.2023
Archive Politics21.04.2023
– Pedro Baía and Carlos Machado e Moura
The following text is an excerpt from ‘Archive Politics: Reflections based on Flashback / Carrilho da Graça’, a longer review published in Jornal Arquitectos 262 of ‘Flashback: Carrilho da Graça’, an exhibition of ten projects by João Luís Carrilho da Graça at Casa da Arquitectura, Matosinhos, (8 April 2022 – 29 January 2023), curated… Read More
Abelardo Morell
06.04.2023
Abelardo Morell06.04.2023
In 2006 Abelardo Morell was invited by a collector with a Palazzo in Venice to photograph a camera obscura image of the Grand Canal in his mother’s bedroom. Morell returned to the city a year later. His host, pointing at a window in a Canaletto painting, said he knew a… Read More
Álvaro Siza — An ‘Amoral’ Architect
27.03.2023
Álvaro Siza — An ‘Amoral’ Architect27.03.2023
The fact that Álvaro Siza did not write about his work or about architecture is a conscious gesture, which goes beyond the mere neutrality of city walls. What is important in Siza is not the end result or the work, hence his lack of comment. His manner, his alibis, his… Read More
Richard Neutra’s Corona Avenue School
22.03.2023
Richard Neutra’s Corona Avenue School22.03.2023
This project scrapbook traces the publication and exhibition history of Richard Neutra’s experimental Corona Avenue School, built in 1935 after the Los Angeles earthquake of 1933. The material for this scrapbook has been compiled by Nicholas Olsberg; his earlier text on the school for Drawing Matter can be read here.
Construct
13.03.2023
Construct13.03.2023
In 1975, OMA (the Office for Metropolitan Architecture) produced two projects for Roosevelt Island (formerly Welfare Island), in New York’s East River, between Manhattan and Queens. The thin sliver of land—historically treated as ‘a storehouse for “undesirables”’ [1]—was undergoing a process of redevelopment under the New York State Urban Development… Read More
Ghost Parking Lot
10.03.2023
Ghost Parking Lot10.03.2023
SITE, an architecture and environmental art group, was founded in 1970 for the purpose of exploring new ways to bring a heightened level of communication and psychological content to buildings, interiors, and public spaces. Originally organised to research, assemble, and publish international documentation on other artists and architects of similar… Read More
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk
01.03.2023
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk01.03.2023
This is the final of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. Extrusion: Hollein in the Southwest The Austrian architect Hans Hollein, for many years a leading figure in the international avant-garde, was a student at… Read More
About Malagueira: Siza’s Poem on Page 27 of Sketchbook 01
20.02.2023
About Malagueira: Siza’s Poem on Page 27 of Sketchbook 0120.02.2023
The following translation proposed for Álvaro Siza’s writings on page 27 of his sketchbook 01 in Drawing Matter Collections is part of an ongoing investigation into the Malagueira project at DA/UAL PhD Programme in Contemporary Architecture. Siza’s sketchbooks are a precious tool for understanding his work and interpreting his concerns.… Read More
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff
17.02.2023
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff17.02.2023
This is the third of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. ‘Aparture’: Bruce Goff in the Parched Land ‘For the Panhandle, …1956 became the seventh straight year of drouth. Except for one savage blizzard, it… Read More
In the Archive: de la Fuente, Unknown, OMA, Ellwood and Ponis
15.02.2023
In the Archive: de la Fuente, Unknown, OMA, Ellwood and Ponis15.02.2023
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. In this series, Drawing Matter invites visitors to write about material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that they have viewed as part of their research. I first found myself at Drawing Matter to view the voiles produced by the Chilean… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate
04.07.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate04.07.2023
– Adrian Dannatt
This is the second part of Adrian Dannatt’s series of reflections on his family home, frequently remodelled and extended over 45 years from 1955, by his father, the architect Trevor Dannatt. Read the introduction to the series, and the first text, here. The other sign on the street—blue baked enamel as ur-signifier… Read More
St Mary's Grove (series) DMC detail