Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
An Artist Browsing the Collection
3 May 2022
An Artist Browsing the Collection3 May 2022
My visits to the archive happened during the summer of 2021 in a gap between lockdowns. Shatwell Farm is a haven of contemporary buildings sitting alongside tumbling and restored farm buildings, an obelisk, pillars, corrugated materials, stone, sleepers, silos, a library, and a gallery. Amongst all this is the Drawing… Read More
Do You Remember How Perfect Everything Was? The Work of Zoe Zenghelis (2021) – Review
26 April 2022
Do You Remember How Perfect Everything Was? The Work of Zoe Zenghelis (2021) – Review26 April 2022
During the spring and summer of 2021, a two-part exhibition of the work of Zoe Zenghelis was shown in London. The first show was an enjoyably intimate immersion at Betts Project in Clerkenwell. The second, a more extensive review at the Architectural Association. Later that year a thick, crisply designed… Read More
The Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel
14 April 2022
The Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel14 April 2022
The plans of the Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel were drawn nearly two hundred years apart, and yet they both speak to the Ruskian timelessness of the ruin. The temple and chapel are representative of their respective ages, with the former alluding to Romanticism’s longing for a pastoral past free… Read More
The Iterative Power of Architecture’s Absence
7 April 2022
The Iterative Power of Architecture’s Absence7 April 2022
In 1991, the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron prepared a submission with the artist Remy Zaugg for the Berlin Morgen (‘Berlin Tomorrow’) exhibition organised by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. By surrounding Berlin’s Tiergarten with four new buildings, they proposed to restructure the park – then perceived as… Read More
In the Archive: Laugier, Eisen, Boulogne, Petitot, Percier, Dumont and Hadid
22 March 2022
In the Archive: Laugier, Eisen, Boulogne, Petitot, Percier, Dumont and Hadid22 March 2022
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. On a crisp January morning I made my way to York railway station to visit… Read More
Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe (2021) – Review
17 March 2022
Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe (2021) – Review17 March 2022
From the frescoes of Pompeii to the Great Hall of Siedlecin, from the Book of Kells to the Book of Hours, architecture has been depicted in full colour. Where colour has been largely absent in the history of architectural representation, however, is in the more technical drawings of architects themselves.… Read More
Entering the Imperial Palace
16 March 2022
Entering the Imperial Palace16 March 2022
‘What a subject for John Martin!’ exclaimed a passer-by, as the hungry flames flickered up York Minster. Maybe they had in mind his apocalyptic painting The Fall of Nineveh, exhibited that same year at the Western Exchange on Old Bond Street and reproduced widely as a mezzotint print. Unbeknown to… Read More
Exhibition Design: Charging the Void
9 March 2022
Exhibition Design: Charging the Void9 March 2022
Last year at Cornell University, five students in Alessandra Cianchetta’s design studio Global Artscapes worked on designs for a gallery in the valley at Shatwell. For this, they used photographs and videos in default of a site visit. The brief was for an exhibition space to accommodate the display of… Read More
The Edge of Architecture: Cornices in the Drawing Matter collection
21 February 2022
The Edge of Architecture: Cornices in the Drawing Matter collection21 February 2022
– Editors
The following group of drawings are presented here as additional illustrations to Maarten Delbeke’s essay The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture.
Charles Stanley Peach: Pioneer in Power
8 February 2022
Charles Stanley Peach: Pioneer in Power8 February 2022
Charles Stanley Peach set up his architectural practice in 1884, just as the public’s access to electricity was established. Through his contacts in the engineering world, he became involved in designing power supply infrastructure, including Brown Hart Gardens, a substation and Italianate garden in Mayfair. The following excerpt is taken… Read More
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, Student Housing, Chieti
7 February 2022
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, Student Housing, Chieti7 February 2022
– Kersten Geers, Stefano Graziani and Jelena Pancevac
The 1976 competition for student housing was part of a development scheme for the recently founded D’Annunzio University, a joint initiative by the neighbouring provinces of Chieti and Pescara in the Abruzzo region of southern Italy. The town of Chieti is located 200km northeast of Rome, on the ancient main… Read More
Charles Jencks: Architect in the Jumping Universe
25 January 2022
Charles Jencks: Architect in the Jumping Universe25 January 2022
Gardens have always been the location to contemplate and speculate on man’s place in nature. Gardens bring the macrocosm into the microcosm by the necessity of being a living place, connecting to the wider rhythms, ecological networks, or the even more abstract forces that create our world. When Charles and… Read More
The Architectural Models of Theodore Conrad: The ‘miniature boom’ of mid-century modernism (2021) – Review
25 January 2022
The Architectural Models of Theodore Conrad: The ‘miniature boom’ of mid-century modernism (2021) – Review25 January 2022
The historian and curator Teresa Fankhänel’s latest book and first monograph, The Architectural Models of Theodore Conrad: The ‘Miniature Boom’ of Mid-Century Modernism, takes a slightly different tack to the recent spell of research about models that has appeared on the shelves of historians and architects alike. For one, Fankhänel… Read More
Álvaro Siza: The Adoration of the magi
19 January 2022
Álvaro Siza: The Adoration of the magi19 January 2022
Our story opens at the close of the Christmas season. It quite literally starts with an Epiphany, both chronologically and figuratively, a glimpse of Three Kings prompted by Niall Hobhouse’s holiday greetings. His somewhat precarious nativity scene, charmingly set upon Álvaro Siza’s yellow columns, reminded me of Sandro Botticelli’s Adoration… Read More
In the Archive: New and Found 2
12 January 2022
In the Archive: New and Found 212 January 2022
– 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 Julia Bloomfield recalls a dinner with Frank… Read More
Between the Layers: Transparent Paper as a Modernist Architectural Design Environment
6 January 2022
Between the Layers: Transparent Paper as a Modernist Architectural Design Environment6 January 2022
The following is an excerpt from Fabio Colonnese’s essay, ‘Between the Layers: Transparent Paper as a Modernist Architectural Design Environment’, published in Digital Modernism Heritage Lexicon (Springer Tracts, 2021). The editors have prefaced this with a short summary of the full essay. The essay describes transparent paper and its operative… Read More
Working with Tony Fretton
4 January 2022
Working with Tony Fretton4 January 2022
In the early 1990s a number of architects, academics and artists came together in a rather fluid manner, meeting regularly in my Bloomsbury apartment. Tony Fretton was older than most of us and had already established a clear critical position. The conversations we had, and sometimes the arguments, were instructive… Read More
Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter
13 December 2021
Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter13 December 2021
– Adrian Forty, Niall Hobhouse and Philippa Lewis
This film was recorded in the Drawing Matter archive on the afternoon of Friday 28 November. It records a conversation between Philippa Lewis, Adrian Forty and Niall Hobhouse, about some of the drawings behind Philippa’s new book, Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter (2021). The film was… Read More
The Temple of Flora, Stourhead: a paradise revisited
9 December 2021
The Temple of Flora, Stourhead: a paradise revisited9 December 2021
In 1744 Henry Hoare employed Henry Flitcroft to design a temple for his magnificent Palladian gardens at Stourhead: The Temple of Flora, which was built by William Privett in 1744–5. Excerpted below is an account of the temple’s history taken from Dudley Dodd’s book, Stourhead: Henry Hoare’s Paradise Revisited (2021). Purchase… Read More
Analoge Architektur: Fire Station Project
8 December 2021
Analoge Architektur: Fire Station Project8 December 2021
This drawing of the roof level of a fire station, designed as a student work in 1986, was for the ‘Analoge Architektur’ exhibition at the Architektur Forum Zurich. [1] While the drawing is the work of an individual, it was inconceivable without the competitive and collegial development of a drawing… Read More
In the Archive: New and Found
1 December 2021
In the Archive: New and Found1 December 2021
– 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 On the digital planchest this time is… Read More
The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors
30 November 2021
The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors30 November 2021
The following excerpt from Peter Jefferson Smith’s The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors (2019) charts the involvement of three generations of the I’Anson dynasty (Edward Sr [1775–1853]; Edward Jr [1812–1888]; and Edward Blakeway [1843–1912]) in the design of the Corn Exchange in Mark Lane, City of London.… Read More
The Evolving Role of Drawing
29 April 2022
The Evolving Role of Drawing29 April 2022
– Nicholas Olsberg
This text was first published in The Architectural Review in 2013. Carlo Scarpa, in a famously infamous gesture, opened all his courses in design at the University of Venice by demonstrating the art of sharpening a pencil. That was the precise point, he claimed, from which all architecture proceeds. And… Read More
sketch theoretical & imaginary education DMC