Category: Drawing Matter archive: research & collecting
On Pristine Boxes and Primeval Huts
13 July 2021
On Pristine Boxes and Primeval Huts13 July 2021
Along with his Do Hit Chair (2000), a pristine stainless steel box measuring 1000 x 700 x 750 mm, Dutch-born designer Marijn van der Poll supplies a sledgehammer. In an act of brute physical force he requires the user to expressively sculpt his own seating morphology, not only allowing but… Read More
Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction
8 July 2021
Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction8 July 2021
Follow James Gowan, through his own photographs, as he inspects the construction progress of the Leicester Engineering Building. While these photographs may have been taken for immediate use at the time, they now serve as a permanent record of the temporary and internal structures that were later disassembled or concealed.… Read More
The Language of Architecture: Peter Märkli’s system of proportion
15 June 2021
The Language of Architecture: Peter Märkli’s system of proportion15 June 2021
Peter Märkli’s hand-drawn section of the ancient monument Hagia Sophia (532–7) is part of a working process developed alongside his design work. The output is a collection of investigative drawings that document sacred archetypal buildings, and articulate his resolved thesis that ‘architecture has a language’. The drawing illustrates a system… Read More
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh
15 June 2021
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh15 June 2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
Insignificance 3: Mourning Work
9 June 2021
Insignificance 3: Mourning Work9 June 2021
All drawings contain traces of all previously drawn mediations. [1] All drawings are silent acts of memorialising (by employing inter-subjective readings of iconography, lineage, parody, reverie and reflexivity) what has been drawn before, or thought to have been so, or simply, what has been, consciously misplaced. [2] The text above… Read More
The Future City
9 June 2021
The Future City9 June 2021
Antonio Sant’Elia foresees the technological cities of the mid to late 20th century. High-rise towers shooting skyward, train lines and highways articulated as horizontally streaking into vanishing points, and aeroplanes arriving and departing omnidirectionally. Similarly, Winold Reiss’s Future City: Study for a Mural, is an homage to technological advancement, and… Read More
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh
7 June 2021
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh7 June 2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
Cartographies of the Imagination
4 June 2021
Cartographies of the Imagination4 June 2021
– Kirsty Badenoch and Sayan Skandarajah
Drawing place is illusory. Maps may begin as transcriptions of a worldly order – a semblance of truth and objectivity – but in doing so, become acts of world-building that both belong to and are entirely removed from their starting point. In 2019, we first visited Shatwell Farm in the… Read More
Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church
1 June 2021
Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church1 June 2021
Up until the turn of the twentieth century architectural renderings tended to be created for clients early in the design process to give them an idea of how a proposed building would look. At that point however they began to be used more widely for publicity purposes as well, thanks… Read More
Hans Poelzig: Decorating the Empty Centre
1 June 2021
Hans Poelzig: Decorating the Empty Centre1 June 2021
‘Artists such as Poelzig, prevented from building in real life, have been driven to create Expressionist cinema architecture […] But in the long run, pasteboard fantasy creations […] can never be satisfying fodder for the architect; he has an inner urge to conceive and erect buildings in which real people… Read More
Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis
27 May 2021
Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis27 May 2021
This study of Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis was made by Pascal Coste (b. 1787 Marseille, France) in 1840 as part of an archeological survey of the Persian City of Persepolis. Through a combination of plan and perspective, Coste portrayed the symmetrical arrangement and elaborate construction of the ancient… Read More
Insignificance 2: Distinction – Polysemy
19 May 2021
Insignificance 2: Distinction – Polysemy19 May 2021
The following texts are excerpted from Gordon Shrigley, Insignificance: A short discourse on the physical and ideational economy of line within architectural representation (Solitude Editions, 1998). Now, twenty years after Insignificance was first published, Gordon Shrigley has revisited the publication for a series of postings on Drawing Matter. Each of these posts connect… Read More
Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva
19 May 2021
Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva19 May 2021
For the curious visitor that approaches the historic remains of the Temple of Minerva Medica in Rome, it will take a lot of effort to contextualize the building as it could have once been. That which before had allowed for a gentle processional approach to the ruin has now been… Read More
Keshi Ghat
13 May 2021
Keshi Ghat13 May 2021
Seeing is a reaching out, a kind of metaphorical touching that involves one’s whole being and is reciprocal. Amita Singh If you hadn’t read the title of the drawing, you would have probably guessed that this would have been a riverfront mosque in India. I did too. The courtyards reminding… Read More
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City
12 May 2021
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City12 May 2021
Hans Hollein’s city structures look awry to someone familiar with his retail work. In the time that these drawings were made, Hollein completed his UC Berkeley degree, travelled across the USA, and did an exhibition with Walter Pichler in Austria. His most influential visit was to the Native American pueblos.… Read More
Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)
11 May 2021
Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)11 May 2021
In 1918, when the First World War ended, Eric Gill was in his late forties and completing the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral. He was soon in demand to design and sculpt war memorials. Gill would create simple memorials listing the names of the fallen for both the… Read More
The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish
10 May 2021
The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish10 May 2021
A phenomenological reading of ‘bridge’ would not prioritise function (crossing) but this suspended moment. – Peter Wilson [1] A fish out of water, a lady in thought, floating ‘wilderness’. Things first have to be separated from each other so as to be united later on. [2] Peter Wilson’s drawings of… Read More
Insignificance 1: Discipline
4 May 2021
Insignificance 1: Discipline4 May 2021
The space of the architectural imagination resides within the discourses of line. This space defines the boundaries of a practice of conceptualising the laws of the place [1] whereby through an array of ordinances, the architectural line constitutes ‘the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically and to analyse… Read More
Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing
3 May 2021
Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing3 May 2021
The speed of transformation that characterises our contemporality is largely motivated by the development of the newest information technologies. The speed introduced by computation seems to be the promoter of the instability that reaches the conceptions of almost all professional and disciplinary fields since it imposes a pace of change… Read More
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)
3 May 2021
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)3 May 2021
This text is an excerpt from Mikhail Bulgakov’s series of short vignettes that appeared under the overarching title ‘Golden City’ and were serialised in the Berlin-based Russian migrant ‘Nakanune’ newspaper between 30 September and 14 October 1923. Bulgakov was commissioned to write an account of the first and only All-Russian… Read More
14 Wine Street, Bristol
29 April 2021
14 Wine Street, Bristol29 April 2021
Whilst leafing through the Drawing Matter collection, this drawing from 1885, by architect Henry Crisp, caught my eye. The drawing depicts a new shopfront and facade to be grafted on to the existing structure of 14 Wine Street, Bristol. Initially, the design struck me as remarkably contemporary and I came… Read More
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness
27 April 2021
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness27 April 2021
– Editors
With thanks to Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this tribute to Sekine written on the first anniversary of the artist’s death (linked here).
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing
26 April 2021
Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing26 April 2021
How we look at architectural drawings is an inherently complicated topic. The issue arises from what we understand to appear and disappear on the page. The field of architecture has spent little time talking about what we see (and don’t see) on the surface of the drawing itself. One could… Read More
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House
21 July 2021
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House21 July 2021
– James Gowan, J. M. Richards, Laurent Stalder, James Stirling and Ellis Woodman
This first impetus for this article was provided by Laurent Stalder’s discussion of the sectional perspective drawing for the Isle of Wight house, reproduced here, which led us to J. M. Richards’ seminal essay, and then onward through the literature. In addition, we asked the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Canadian… Read More
plan section domestic DMC