Category: drawing techniques & materials

Fabric Fabrications

Fabric Fabrications

Peter Wilson

Interpretation I am very grateful to Mark Dorian for his reading of my 1977 drawing. [1] While at the time of its laborious production, the word shroud was not uppermost as my intended coding, I can now see that the dark, drawn folds have a real, symbolic or imaginary resonance—subsequently… Read More

A Machine is a House for Making a Living

A Machine is a House for Making a Living

Drawing Architecture Studio

‘Mobility’ has long been a theme in architecture. After observing everyday life in Chinese cities, we became interested in exploring an understanding of mobility, which is not primarily defined by motion, but by the practices of pausing and occupying urban space. The discovery comes from the vehicles used by street… Read More

Banana Ballpoint

Banana Ballpoint

James Gowan

design for a ball-point pen to be the same size as a banana, in plastic with soft rubber skin, and in bold natural colour, technicolour preferably. based on the observation that a ‘peeled’ banana is good functional shape for writing—not unlike a quill pen nor much like one either. 1st… Read More

Typology: A conversation

Typology: A conversation

Richard Hall, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner

In Spring 2025, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner corresponded about books which each had recently published that deal with the issue of ‘type’ and the role of drawing in typological work.[1] Hans invited Richard Hall to join the conversation, widening the discussion to three generations working in three… Read More

Urban Landscape

Urban Landscape

Mehdi Zannad

The following method for drawing urban landscapes was sent to us by Mehdi Zannad after his recent visit to Drawing Matter. It was first published by éditions Parenthèses in Topo-graphies in 2020. The view drawn by Mehdi is located near to the publisher’s office, which allowed him to scan each… Read More

Melancholy Little Gardens

Melancholy Little Gardens

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Lionel Wallace, the protagonist of H.G. Wells’s The Door in the Wall (1906), was haunted by the vision of an enchanted garden glimpsed in childhood. Having eluded the vigilant and authoritative care of his nursery governess, he found himself wandering aimlessly among the long grey West Kensington roads until he… Read More

Genius loci

Genius loci

Mehdi Zannad

This text was first published in French in d’a | d’architectures (no 322,11 December 2024) as a review of the exhibition Trompe-l’oeil, from 1520 to the present day, which was on show at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris from 17 October 2024 to 2 March 2025.  * It is difficult to distinguish between the… Read More

DMJ – A Storyboard for the Fun Palace

DMJ – A Storyboard for the Fun Palace

Ana Bonet Miró

Each community, with its own pride, wit and resourcefulness, could make a toy, a microcosm, a small city, a university-of-the-streets, a street theatre, a science playground, an adventure playground for the young kids – a place for time-wasting, gossip, new-arguing, learning, promenading, dancing, eating and drinking, handling tools, paint, machinery…… Read More

Studio Ponis: The Crystal and the Flame

Studio Ponis: The Crystal and the Flame

Irina Davidovici, Niall Hobhouse, Alex Pillen, Jonathan Sergison and Annarita Zalaffi

On Friday 20 June, Drawing Matter welcomed Annarita Zalaffi, Jonathan Sergison, Irina Davidovici, and Alex Pillen to the archive for a conversation about the work of Studio Ponis in Sardinia, and Alberto Ponis and Annarita Zalaffi’s working relationship. The conversation marked the opening of an exhibition of drawings from the… Read More

From the Poetics of Reality to the Poetics of Memory

From the Poetics of Reality to the Poetics of Memory

Esin Kömez Dağlıoğlu

Aldo Rossi’s conception of context underwent a significant transformation over the course of his architectural career, shifting from an emphasis on place to a preoccupation with memory.[1] This evolution is most discernible in his drawings. A comparative close reading of two works—an untitled drawing from 1950 and Composizione con S. Carlo–Città e Monumenti from 1970—reveals… Read More

Kasuri Nomad Horizon

Kasuri Nomad Horizon

Mio Tsuneyama

This actor-network diagram traces the journey from raw materials to eventual disposal for Kasuri Nomad Horizon, a furniture set crafted from Bingo Kasuri, a traditional Japanese cotton fabric. Created for the Distillation of Architecture: 家具 exhibition at the Architectural Association School of Architecture from the 17th January to the 7th… Read More

The Eternal Change – The Coming of a Ruin

The Eternal Change – The Coming of a Ruin

Allan Bech Hansen

During the spring of 2024, I was fortunate to spend some time in Rome as a fellow at the Danish Institute. My agenda was to delve deeper into the importance of water in the eternal city—having chosen the Italian capital as the context of this investigation due to the significant… Read More

Wang Shu: Drawing Uncommon Grounds

Wang Shu: Drawing Uncommon Grounds

Xin Jin

Despite the extensive literature on Chinese experimental architecture that emerged in the mid-1990s after the Cultural Revolution, architects’ reflections on and practices of representation remain under explored. Wang Shu (王澍), recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Prize, is a prominent figure in Chinese experimental architecture. Though widely acclaimed in the West… Read More

The (Im)possible Palimpsest

The (Im)possible Palimpsest

Mattia De Lotto

Preceding the Campo Marzio plan, a plate named Scenographia Campi Martii offers a clue towards an understanding of Piranesi’s work—the terminology is fundamental, the word Scenographia is purposely chosen to make a direct link to the theatrical representation and scenic design, often investigated by Piranesi. The image presented in this… Read More

Walter Marchetti: Observation of the Movements of a Fly

Walter Marchetti: Observation of the Movements of a Fly

Matt Page

A fly lands on a windowpane. It pauses for a few seconds before crawling across the surface. It stops again, and waits. It flies off the glass and drops down at another point. It crawls, pauses; crawls, waits. This routine continues from 7 in the morning until 8 at night…… Read More

Pembroke’s Archives

Pembroke’s Archives

Alison Turnbull

Alison Turnbull was appointed lead artist for the Mill Lane development at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge in 2020. Drawing on objects from the College Archive and working in close collaboration with architects Haworth Tompkins and landscape architects Tom Stuart-Smith Studio, she has created permanent works for the new interior… Read More

Name(r)s of the Animals and Drawers

Name(r)s of the Animals and Drawers

Bahar Avanoğlu

‘Barely Traced, the true drawing escapes.’[1]  On a late night while reading Latife Tekin’s Zamansız (Timeless or Without Time)–a tale of love embedded in a lake, unfolded within the obscured semblances of a weasel and an eel–I found myself moving my lips, whispering: ‘Frii-iii-er-frii-ii-frii’. As I read the words printed on the paper, I… Read More

Aldo Rossi at Drawing Matter

Aldo Rossi at Drawing Matter

Editors and Nicholas Olsberg

Aldo Rossi started as a painter, working in the tradition and model of Mario Sironi, whose metaphysical landscapes echo throughout his later work. Although his architectural career commenced with writing, editing and teaching, drawing—especially drawing with colour—remained the principal means to explore and communicate his ideas, and to evoke the… Read More

DMJ – A Will to the City

DMJ – A Will to the City

Lars Lerup

Nine unfinished drawings from 15 years ago; a text titled Phobos, which later appears in print; a story by Emilio Gadda and a brief encounter with agoraphobes; Denis Hollier’s work on Bataille’s aversion to monuments; Michel Serres’ Rome: The Book of Foundations; Aldo Rossi’s fabricca; Michel Foucault’s panopticism; Borges’ fear of mirrors; 50 years of sporadic visits to… Read More

DMJ – Place is the Principle of Generation

DMJ – Place is the Principle of Generation

Peter Carl

The essay takes the theme of storytelling and architecture as an opportunity to reframe the received generalisations of time and space. Roger Bacon’s insight that place is intrinsically temporal anticipates the description of ‘scene construction’ by neuroscientists Demis Hassabis, Dharshan Kumaran and Eleanor A. Maguire as that which ‘constitutes a common process underlying episodic memory’.… Read More

Making their Curves Come True…

Making their Curves Come True…

Editors

By the 1950s, a generation of architectural draughtsmen had abandoned their Beaux Arts ‘curves’ for the rulers and set squares of High Modernism; they had to be tempted back, by whatever means, to drawing the irregular curves that were both a possibility—and a feature—of the new architecture of structural concrete.… Read More

On Axonometric Drawing

On Axonometric Drawing

Martino Tattara

In the work of our practice, since the very start, we have placed a great deal of attention towards drawing and representation. The recent exhibition in Antwerp—The Urban Villa—is a good example of our work, which is based on the combination of design with research; both of these two activities… Read More

Paul Rudolph: Transcending the Conventions of Architectural Drawing 

Paul Rudolph: Transcending the Conventions of Architectural Drawing 

Timothy M. Rohan

Paul Rudolph (1918-1997) is known for his compelling large-scale presentation drawings, such as the memorable perspective sections of his Yale Art & Architecture Building in New Haven, CT (1958-1963), among others. But a deeper dig into the Rudolph archive at the United States Library of Congress in Washington D.C. reveals… Read More

Dogma: Urban Villa – From Speculation to Collaboration

Dogma: Urban Villa – From Speculation to Collaboration

James Payne

On the north edge of Brussels city centre, the recently refurbished Gare Maritime was once Europe’s largest goods station. Located in the former industrial area known as ‘Tour & Taxis’, the vast nineteenth-century roof now shelters offices, indoor retail boulevards and enough left over space to host markets and events,… Read More