Category: drawing histories
Reading Las Vegas: An Oral History of Drawing
02.09.2026
Reading Las Vegas: An Oral History of Drawing02.09.2026
– Denise Scott Brown and Ariel Koltun-Fromm
The following interview is excerpted from a longer conversation between Ariel Koltun-Fromm and Denise Scott Brown which took place in April 2024 at her home in Philadelphia. It is part of a larger research project by Ariel investigating drawing as a means of interrogating existing places. * Ariel Koltun-Fromm (AKF):… Read More
‘Not only a Building but also a City’
28.08.2026
‘Not only a Building but also a City’ 28.08.2026
At the end of the twelfth century, Peter the Chanter (d. 1197), never one to mince his words, complained about a new fad of making drawings to illustrate biblical passages. Why, he wondered, were people creating convoluted diagrams to illustrate the ‘things’ that appear in the Bible, all those vessels, beasts,… Read More
Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation
24.08.2026
Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation24.08.2026
– Michael Gold and Dalibor Vesely
The following text, ‘The Dialogue of Representation’ by Dalibor Vesely, was published in People in Architecture, the book featuring the exhibition of work by Michael Gold’s AA Unit 5 students held at the Architectural Association, 4–29 October 1983. Read a response to the exhibition by Peter Wilson here. Drawing Matter… Read More
Models of Models: The House Transformed
17.08.2026
Models of Models: The House Transformed17.08.2026
The house is architecture’s most overdetermined subject. It carries the weight of every disciplinary trope, cultural norm, political aspiration, and sentimental projection that can be placed on a building. To approach it critically—and to argue that its conventions have been an instrument of exclusion rather than a neutral container—is itself… Read More
DMJ – Storytelling by Omission: On Dixon Jones’s ‘Selective Axonometrics’
13.08.2026
DMJ – Storytelling by Omission: On Dixon Jones’s ‘Selective Axonometrics’13.08.2026
Architectural drawings tell stories through what they omit as much as what they depict. This article explores the role of thoughtful omission in axonometric drawing through two drawings made by British practice Dixon Jones Architects from the 1990s. While architectural practice has come to favour photorealistic representations that present a… Read More
Collection Guide: Cedric Price
03.08.2026
Collection Guide: Cedric Price03.08.2026
– Editors
Cedric Price (1934–2003) studied architecture at Cambridge University before receiving his diploma from the Architectural Association (AA) in 1957. He went on to teach at the AA and worked in the offices of Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun before founding his own practice in 1960. Though the majority of Price’s… Read More
Weave & Disturbance
27.07.2026
Weave & Disturbance27.07.2026
Against a polyhedral, reticulated pale blue background, a pale terracotta network of ducts spreads out like ivy. It twists, branches, and folds back upon itself: a technological nervous system recording the temperature of the seventies. The drawing is precise, informative, and aesthetically autonomous. Ink and graphite on tracing paper. It… Read More
Atlases: Drawings on Newspaper
10.07.2026
Atlases: Drawings on Newspaper10.07.2026
My drawings are done on an unusual medium: newspapers. Around 2016, I began to draw on news–paper to try to counteract that inescapable status of newspapers themselves: conveying daily words that are often forgotten the next day, a condition reflected in an idiom of the English language—yesterday’s paper—used to refer… Read More
The Visual Origins of Circulation in Architecture
09.07.2026
The Visual Origins of Circulation in Architecture09.07.2026
Amidst the architecture historians, the comparison between the plan of Borromini’s church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and that of one of Bramante’s four pillars supporting the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is well-known. Though I could not find the name of the historian who conceived it, it definitely… Read More
DMJ – SMS to Eternity
03.07.2026
DMJ – SMS to Eternity03.07.2026
Marlon and Elvis lived on opposite sides of Cutlers Wood.They were friends.They were immortal.One day Marlon sent Elvis an SMS: Marlon – Hey Elvis, cool cat, why don’t we see each other more often,We could talk about that geek Warhol who put us here! Elvis – Sure, but I am scared to… Read More
An Attardé Draftsman: Giacomo Beverati
02.07.2026
An Attardé Draftsman: Giacomo Beverati02.07.2026
‘In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight, only in its recollection’ —Andrei Tarkovsky Italian culture has always produced artists who were attardé, either… Read More
Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings
29.06.2026
Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings29.06.2026
– Editors
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Mapping Water
26.06.2026
Mapping Water26.06.2026
Some years ago, I travelled to Egypt and visited the Suez Canal—the international water passage that connects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. While standing on a small pier in Ismailia, I watched the huge cargo ships passing; the canal seemed more like a water highway. At the same time,… Read More
Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON
22.06.2026
Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON22.06.2026
– Editors
Peter Wilson and Julia Bolles are the founding partners of Architekturbüro BOLLES+WILSON. Peter Wilson was born in Australia, he studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the Architectural Association, where he later taught from 1974–1988 (Diploma Unit Master 1980–88). Julia Bolles was born in Münster and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of… Read More
The Primacy of Drawing
15.06.2026
The Primacy of Drawing15.06.2026
The Primacy of Drawing, Deanna Petherbridge’s magisterial survey of the place of drawing in European art since the Renaissance, was first published by Yale University Press in 2010. Weighing in at 520 pages, it was a formidable achievement of vast erudition and profound insight, the fruits of more than two… Read More
DMJ – Show
12.06.2026
DMJ – Show12.06.2026
Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler. Where? James Joyce, Ulysses 17.2328-32 [1] Night-time on Eccles Street. Someone is half-dreaming of a mythical bird—a roc—in the Arabian… Read More
The Right to Imagine: Michael Sorkin’s Visual Argument
08.06.2026
The Right to Imagine: Michael Sorkin’s Visual Argument08.06.2026
On the wall of the third-floor mezzanine of the Spitzer School of Architecture of The City College of New York (CCNY) hangs a wood model titled Urbanagram. It was the product of a collaboration of students of the Master’s in Urban Design Program, directed for almost two decades by Michael Sorkin… Read More
Vanbrugh in the Best Light: Sir John Soane’s Lecture Drawings of Blenheim Palace
01.06.2026
Vanbrugh in the Best Light: Sir John Soane’s Lecture Drawings of Blenheim Palace01.06.2026
The architect Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) is currently enjoying a moment in the sun! 2026 marks the tercentenary of his death and a variety of activities have been organised to celebrate and reassess this most dynamic of British architects, under the banner of ‘Vanbrugh 300’, which is being coordinated by… Read More
The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad
28.05.2026
The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad28.05.2026
– Editors
In the first three months of 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum presented a small exhibition dedicated to Le Corbusier’s unrealised Olympic Stadium Project for Baghdad. The show was organised by the RIBA, Irena Murray, and Peter Carl, with work loaned from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the Fondation… Read More
Protected: Up in the Air: The Heygate and Aylesbury Estates
27.05.2026
Protected: Up in the Air: The Heygate and Aylesbury Estates27.05.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing
25.05.2026
Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing25.05.2026
The first thing to be said about the drawings of Carlos Bedoya is that this is not an exercise in nostalgia, or a case for the lost art of drawing by hand. The architects of PRODUCTORA work in the present, with all the tools and techniques available to them. The… Read More
My Parish Drawings
19.05.2026
My Parish Drawings19.05.2026
From an early age I was in love with China and all things Chinese. I don’t know what inspired this passion, but a few years ago I came upon a Rupert Bear cartoon strip and there was the Emperor of China aloft on a flying carpet. I know my father… Read More
Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing
14.05.2026
Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing14.05.2026
The following text is one of the entries included in the book Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2025) edited by Uwe Fleckner and Mari Lending. The book, presented in the form of a dictionary, examines architectural provenance across 101 key concepts, from acquisition to will. Each… Read More
Franco Purini: Drawings of Imagination
03.09.2026
Franco Purini: Drawings of Imagination03.09.2026
– Lina Malfona
‘The drawing represents the medianic exploration of the shaded side of reason and, contradictorily, the scene of an ideal landscape in which the architect believes he will be happy. As the place of theoretical truth, the drawing institutes itself independently of architecture. Superior to architecture by the fact that it… Read More
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