Category: drawing histories
Alberto Ponis, The London Years
14 December 2023
Alberto Ponis, The London Years14 December 2023
I am leafing through a neat hundred-page sketchbook with notes, the text enlivened with pencil, charcoal, and pen sketches with varied annotations, including asterisks and underlining in colour crayon, brought into order with careful lists and occasional full pages on practical matters such as delivering a lecture or taking architectural… Read More
The Polyhedrists (2022) – Review
8 December 2023
The Polyhedrists (2022) – Review8 December 2023
The Polyhedrists is described as ‘a history of the relationship between art and geometry in early modern period’.[1] Despite it being a relatively short book, it offers a complex and confronting view of polyhedra’s history; polyhedra being three-dimensional convex shapes with flat polygonal faces and straight edges. Its author, Noam… Read More
DMJ – The Stereoautograph
6 December 2023
DMJ – The Stereoautograph6 December 2023
The Zeiss Stereoautograph 1914 Bild II is a mammoth device (Fig.1). It weighs over 400kg and has the same footprint as a Smart Car. When it was retired and donated to the Zeiss Archive in 2004, the Technical University of Hanover had to remove part of its roof in order to lift… Read More
Heinz Isler: Natural Hills on Different Edge Lines
14 November 2023
Heinz Isler: Natural Hills on Different Edge Lines14 November 2023
I first encountered Heinz Isler’s thin reinforced concrete shells when I saw his presentation ‘Third Decade of Structural Shells’ at the thirtieth anniversary symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), in Madrid, in September 1989. This was the first time I saw his inspirational drawing ‘Natural Hills on… Read More
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers
9 November 2023
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers9 November 2023
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Manufacture of architecture: Joseph Paxton and the development of the Great Stove
9 November 2023
The Manufacture of architecture: Joseph Paxton and the development of the Great Stove9 November 2023
This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. Joseph… Read More
Keep digging and you will find what you are looking for: Alvar Aalto in Germany
27 October 2023
Keep digging and you will find what you are looking for: Alvar Aalto in Germany27 October 2023
In 1957, Alvar Aalto gave a speech in Munich entitled ‘Schöner Wohnen’.[1] He referred to his own design, the Hansaviertel apartment block in Berlin—his first project in Germany—as he described the key concerns in the design of the modern dwelling. (The construction of Aalto’s second German project, the Neue Vahr… Read More
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once
20 October 2023
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once20 October 2023
In this film Stephen Bates discusses a group of drawings by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Upper Lawn Pavilion, dating from the late 1950s when the Smithsons bought the site, and the 1970s when the architects proposed several alterations—only some of which were realised. Stephen Bates’ relationship with the… Read More
Gothic Put to Use: The Viollet-le-Duc Album
6 October 2023
Gothic Put to Use: The Viollet-le-Duc Album6 October 2023
This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. In… Read More
DMJ — Of Lines Terrestrial and Occult: Friedrich Gilly, Alberto Sartoris, Adolphe Appia, and the Matter of Perspective
2 October 2023
DMJ — Of Lines Terrestrial and Occult: Friedrich Gilly, Alberto Sartoris, Adolphe Appia, and the Matter of Perspective2 October 2023
This essay discusses three enigmatic one-point perspective drawings. The first was made by the precocious Prussian architect and teacher Friedrich Gilly, the second by Alberto Sartoris as a young student of architecture in Geneva, and the third by the relatively unknown modern Swiss scenographer Adolphe Appia. These drawings have been… Read More
Quinta da Malagueira
11 August 2023
Quinta da Malagueira11 August 2023
– Pier Vittorio Aureli
In this short text Pier Vittorio Aureli reflects on Quinta da Malagueira housing project in what he sees as a potential convergence between formal principals and political intentions. Quinta da Malagueira is perhaps the last great ‘social housing project’. That is, it is the last great architectural contribution to the… Read More
sketch plan DMC