Category: drawing histories
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds
31 May 2024
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds31 May 2024
This is the second post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein
29 May 2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29 May 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
Louis-Hippolyte Lebas at Drawing Matter
27 May 2024
Louis-Hippolyte Lebas at Drawing Matter27 May 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
French architect Louis-Hippolyte Lebas (1782–1867) trained with Percier and Fontaine, whose assistant he remained for some years; working in Paris, both independently and in collaboration with Éloi Labarre and others from the mid 1820s; professor of history of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1840; and leader of an… Read More
Notes from Rome
23 May 2024
Notes from Rome23 May 2024
– Anna Kostreva and Diane Lewis
The following text first appeared in Conceiving the Plan: Nuance and Intimacy in Civic Space, ed. by Yael Hameiri Sainsaux (Milano: Skira editore, 2022), 192-195. Edited and transcribed by Anna Kostreva. In 1977, Diane Lewis had just graduated from The Cooper Union and was honored with a fellowship at the… Read More
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs
22 May 2024
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs22 May 2024
‘Geometric, rigorously drawn, and yet always signed somewhere with an asymmetrical fold or knot.’[1] While this could be a concise description of Peter Wilson’s work, it is in fact Roland Barthes writing in his book Empire of Signs (1970) about what he described as the Japanese ‘ecstasy of the package’.[2] Barthes was struck by… Read More
Architectural models and the oriental ideal of the Alhambra
20 May 2024
Architectural models and the oriental ideal of the Alhambra20 May 2024
The Alhambra architectural models reflect the circumstances in which they were created, during the last years of the Romantic movement, when artists and patrons were fascinated by the diffuse idea of the ‘Orient’, somewhat embodied by the Alhambra. This part-myth, part-real palace was the ultimate destination for Romantic travellers and… Read More
O.M. Ungers: Drawing a metaphor
17 May 2024
O.M. Ungers: Drawing a metaphor17 May 2024
– Diogo Lopes and Fanny Noël
This drawing emerged within the framework of a summer school in Berlin, organized by Oswald Mathias Ungers for his Cornell students in 1977. The project was developed by the German architect together with his assistants, Peter Riemann, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Kolhoff and Arthur Ovaska and it offers a vision for… Read More
John Hejduk’s Farm Library
15 May 2024
John Hejduk’s Farm Library15 May 2024
– Mehrshad Atashi and Lida Badafareh
Farm Library is one among the sixty-eight entities that John Hejduk designed for the Lancaster/Hanover Masque. It is a primitive round object, with a spiral staircase positioned in its centre, running from the ground to the top. The bookshelves of the library are aligned with the boundary of the building, maintaining a distance… Read More
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture
6 May 2024
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture6 May 2024
What does the bozzetto that the young Giuseppe Terragni made in 1926, together with Pietro Lingeri, for the competition for the Monumento ai Caduti (War Memorial) in Como have to tell us? It speaks to us of the complexity of its creator, a complexity that Terragni shares with Italian art… Read More
Hans Hollein at Drawing Matter
23 April 2024
Hans Hollein at Drawing Matter23 April 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The Austrian architect Hans Hollein (1934–2014) studied under Clemens Holzmeister at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and then at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the College of Environmental Design at the University of California Berkeley. With the sculptor and designer Walter Pichler he introduced a body of… Read More
OMA: London—Foreplay
19 April 2024
OMA: London—Foreplay19 April 2024
This is the first post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Helsinki City Theatre: Timo Penttilä on the real purpose of drawings
12 April 2024
Helsinki City Theatre: Timo Penttilä on the real purpose of drawings12 April 2024
On his retirement in 1998 as professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Finnish architect Timo Penttilä returned to Finland, where he soon made the decision to close his architectural practice. In this process he ordered his staff to destroy the entire office archive of drawings… Read More
C.S. Peach and the Cruciform Design of the Cathedral
5 April 2024
C.S. Peach and the Cruciform Design of the Cathedral5 April 2024
In view here is a startling watercolour by Charles Stanley Peach, titled Plan of a Church Constructed on Divine Principles (1910)—his pictorial articulation of the cruciform layout of the Christian Cathedral. Architectural aspects are overlayed upon two images of Jesus. The first with his arms splayed wide, hands pinned to… Read More
Erik Gunnar Asplund at Drawing Matter
2 April 2024
Erik Gunnar Asplund at Drawing Matter2 April 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940), trained first at the Royal Institute of Technology (where he would teach from 1931), and then at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, undertook an extensive study tour of Greece and Italy, and opened his own practice around 1913, working entirely in Sweden, and… Read More
Helmut Jacoby: The Amon Carter Museum
22 March 2024
Helmut Jacoby: The Amon Carter Museum22 March 2024
You can stand on the balcony of Philip Johnson’s Amon Carter Museum today and see the same view of Fort Worth that Helmut Jacoby drew up in 1960. Not much has changed. Apart from the fanciful New-Mexican art in the foreground (his invention), the same hot Texan sun, the same… Read More
DMJ – The Sun as Drawing Machine: Towards the Unification of Projection Systems from Villalpando to Farish
20 March 2024
DMJ – The Sun as Drawing Machine: Towards the Unification of Projection Systems from Villalpando to Farish20 March 2024
– Francisco Javier Girón Sierra
At the beginning of the 17th century, the Spanish Jesuit Juan Bautista Villalpando spent his last years of life in Rome obsessively working on an interpretation of the Temple of Solomon. When he came to the question of how to represent its plan, he envisioned a new, almost ghostly, way… Read More
Artful Trades: Into a Market of Consumables
6 March 2024
Artful Trades: Into a Market of Consumables6 March 2024
The following text is an excerpt from the guide that accompanied the exhibition ‘PRINT READY DRAWINGS: Composites, Layers, and Paste-ups, 1950-1989’, installed at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles between 11 November 2023 – 4 February 2024, and curated by Sarah Hearne. Despite predictions of the… Read More
Unveiling the Enigma: Jan Henriksson’s Örebro Riksbank, 1987.
29 February 2024
Unveiling the Enigma: Jan Henriksson’s Örebro Riksbank, 1987.29 February 2024
– Felicia Liang and William Wikström
Jan Henriksson playfully crafted an evocative scenography for the financial world of the 1980s, deviating from the pursuit of uniformity with various forms that break free as autonomous figures within a larger context. Two of Henriksson’s drawings for the Central Bank, Örebro Riksbank exemplify his unique position in 20th-century Swedish… Read More
Tim Robinson: Deep Mapping
26 February 2024
Tim Robinson: Deep Mapping26 February 2024
This text is an excerpt from Shallow Time: The Burren (Dpr-Barcelona and Irish Architecture Foundation, 2023), 73-74, written by Tom Cookson. The text is reproduced with permission from the Irish Architecture Foundation. How to communicate the topographic nature of landscape and lived experience on a map reproduced on paper? The composition… Read More
Houses for Printing: A Microcosm of the World
21 February 2024
Houses for Printing: A Microcosm of the World21 February 2024
The following text is an excerpt from the guide that accompanied the exhibition ‘PRINT READY DRAWINGS: Composites, Layers, and Paste-ups, 1950-1989’, installed at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles between 11 November 2023 – 4 February 2024, and curated by Sarah Hearne. Caterina Pincioni, secretary at… Read More
Ludwig Wittgenstein (and Gustav III of Sweden), designing gardens
15 February 2024
Ludwig Wittgenstein (and Gustav III of Sweden), designing gardens15 February 2024
In the following extract, from his book Cambridge College Gardens, Tim Richardson describes the incident that made philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein sketch out his ideas for an alternative garden design at Trinity College in Cambridge, alongside a letter Wittgenstein wrote to the College Garden Committee objecting to the plans for their… Read More
Architectural Covers: A Site of Design
7 February 2024
Architectural Covers: A Site of Design7 February 2024
The following text is an excerpt from the guide that accompanied the exhibition ‘PRINT READY DRAWINGS: Composites, Layers, and Paste-ups, 1950-1989’, installed at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles between 11 November 2023 – 4 February 2024, and curated by Sarah Hearne. Between 1971 and 1973,… Read More
Simon Fraser University
1 February 2024
Simon Fraser University1 February 2024
This text is an excerpt from Arthur Erickson on Learning Systems, co-published by Concordia University Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture where the Arthur Erickson Archive is held. The text is reproduced with the kind permission of the Estate of Arthur Erickson. Recalling distant events is not easy, but those years two… Read More
The Captive Globe
28 March 2024
The Captive Globe28 March 2024
– Reinier de Graaf
This essay is about a drawing—or rather, about the insight embedded within that drawing and the life it has taken on in the forty-five years since it was made. The drawing in question is The City of the Captive Globe. It was created in 1972, first published in 1978 by… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric) publication concept & diagram theoretical & imaginary urban form