Category: drawing techniques & materials
DMJ – Asphalt Tales and the Ends of History
3 March 2023
DMJ – Asphalt Tales and the Ends of History3 March 2023
This paper explores how asphalt became a medium for architects and artists from the late 1950s to the 1970s to raise and articulate questions about memory, oblivion, communication and the environment. It questions to what extent T.J. Demos’ recent assertion that experimental visual culture is embedded ‘within social engagements and… Read More
DMJ – Shallow Cuts: the geological sectioning of Newcastle, NSW
3 March 2023
DMJ – Shallow Cuts: the geological sectioning of Newcastle, NSW3 March 2023
This paper charts the emergence of the drawn section as a mode of documenting geological time and physical space. This is specifically mapped in the Antipodean context of colonisation, where vital resources underneath the ground were mediated with strategic ambitions above. The relatively small period in the history of the… Read More
Pier Vittorio Aureli: Ambiguous Drawings
7 February 2023
Pier Vittorio Aureli: Ambiguous Drawings7 February 2023
For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More
DMJ – Dialogues between Architecture And Granite in Punta Sardegna
20 January 2023
DMJ – Dialogues between Architecture And Granite in Punta Sardegna20 January 2023
The stones are also premonitions, and the trails chart a course through nature that is both sign and path, direction and culture. The human journey and the mystery of the eternal, chance and intervention. Thus, the pre-existing stones are added and mingle with those put in later, and vice versa,… Read More
fala: butterflies
19 December 2022
fala: butterflies19 December 2022
– fala
This is the final of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Every discussion ends in a few drawn lines as words don’t do the job as well. A project is usually sketched between the lines that… Read More
fala: photography
13 December 2022
fala: photography13 December 2022
– fala
This is the seventh of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. We photograph the construction site a few times, to keep a certain moment for later. When construction ends, we photograph it again, intensely. Not just… Read More
fala: collages
25 November 2022
fala: collages25 November 2022
– fala
This is the sixth of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. fala started with collages. An abundance of images populated the internet; at some point, an online presence was decidedly claimed. Collages were the closest we… Read More
DMJ – Borromini’s Smudge
15 November 2022
DMJ – Borromini’s Smudge15 November 2022
This text, published alongside Bernhard Siegert’s article ‘From Landscape to Mapscape: Robert Smithson’s Maps’ marks the launch of the first and second issues of DMJournal–Architecture and Representation. Over the coming months, we will be publishing articles from both DMJ 1: The Geological Imagination and DMJ 2: Drawing Instruments/Instrumental Drawings. The… Read More
fala: execution drawings
7 November 2022
fala: execution drawings7 November 2022
– fala
This is the fifth of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Construction documents include an array of scales. General drawings, partials, maps, details, and indexes are loaded with intentions and manic descriptions. They are supposed to… Read More
fala: renders
28 October 2022
fala: renders28 October 2022
– fala
This is the fourth of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Low-resolution images are humble and straightforward. The textures are blunt and the colours are strong. Ambient occlusion is mostly off. Light, shadows and reflections are rarely under… Read More
How Big is Big – Does Scale Matter? A Reflection on Scale in Architecture and Drawing
21 October 2022
How Big is Big – Does Scale Matter? A Reflection on Scale in Architecture and Drawing21 October 2022
– Federica Goffi and Devon Moar
The bee drawing(s) by Devon Moar illustrate that changes in scale imply a passage of time. One drawing here becomes many drawings, each marking a different moment of discovery unfolding a process. One could say that when it comes to architectural media, there are two types of scales dealing with… Read More
fala: wireframes
17 October 2022
fala: wireframes17 October 2022
– fala
This is the third of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Wireframes are snapshots of three-dimensional models built solely from lines. Single-line plans and sections are extruded to form a light envelope. Its colours dismantle the… Read More
Fronts and Faces
7 October 2022
Fronts and Faces7 October 2022
The paper is cut without measuring. Rulers and set squares are neglected. Scissors are preferred over cutters and cutting mats. Circles are traced from nearby cups and glasses. The lines are never quite parallel. The edges are askew and the angles are uncertain. Alignments, perfect geometries and round numbers are… Read More
fala: comprehensive
3 October 2022
fala: comprehensive3 October 2022
– fala
This is the second of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Normally, a project is depicted through a series of plans, sections, elevations, and some axonometric drawings, perhaps – every aspect of it explained and documented. We… Read More
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine
26 September 2022
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine26 September 2022
In 1968 Adolfo Natalini’s partner, Frances Brunton, returned to Florence from London with their newborn daughter and a small wooden chest with five drawers. On three sides of the chest, Natalini hand painted sky-blue flowers on an orange background. The chest of drawers was then taken to the Superstudio-studio in… Read More
fala: the single line
19 September 2022
fala: the single line19 September 2022
– fala
This is the first of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. It started from a rather liberating decision to omit thicknesses. Gradually, all the information that wasn’t central to our thinking was removed, avoiding any celebration… Read More
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the city through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II
17 June 2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the city through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II17 June 2022
This is part two of two posts pairing Freddie Phillipsons’s drawings from The Ulysses Project with excerpts from James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, until 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international programme of events celebrating 100 years… Read More
Drawing Out, Drawing In: Cartographies for ‘Out of the Sea’
24 March 2022
Drawing Out, Drawing In: Cartographies for ‘Out of the Sea’24 March 2022
The provocation for this essay is Drawing Matter’s own: ‘we take the word “drawing” to be as much a verb as a noun…’ Drawing describes an act and a thing: both a process and the outcome of that process. There aren’t many English words like it, and many of them… Read More
Postmodern Australia: Robert Pearce’s Drawings for Edmond and Corrigan
1 February 2022
Postmodern Australia: Robert Pearce’s Drawings for Edmond and Corrigan1 February 2022
Writing in Cities of Hope (1993), the historian Conrad Hamann relates that, on mentioning to Robert Venturi the name of the Australian postmodernist architect Peter Corrigan, the first words from Venturi’s mouth were ‘Oh God! Corrigan!’. Yet it must be made clear that to Corrigan, and to his wife and… Read More
The Measure of It: An Essay on Measured Drawings
31 January 2022
The Measure of It: An Essay on Measured Drawings31 January 2022
As a classical architect, George Saumarez Smith not only believes in producing something that is pleasing to the eye, but in the importance of precise measuring in architectural practice, that ‘…the important part of an architect’s role is to produce drawings as instructions to a builder’. The following excerpt is… Read More
Analoge Architektur: Fire Station Project
8 December 2021
Analoge Architektur: Fire Station Project8 December 2021
This drawing of the roof level of a fire station, designed as a student work in 1986, was for the ‘Analoge Architektur’ exhibition at the Architektur Forum Zurich. [1] While the drawing is the work of an individual, it was inconceivable without the competitive and collegial development of a drawing… Read More
Drawing Parallels: John Hejduk’s Wall House 1
6 December 2021
Drawing Parallels: John Hejduk’s Wall House 16 December 2021
The following text is extracted, with permission, from Drawing Parallels: Knowledge Production in Axonometric, Isometric and Oblique Drawings by Ray Lucas, published by Routledge © 2020. Available here. Drawing Parallels explores the uses of parallel projection in the work of five twentieth century architects: James Stirling, JJP Oud, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk,… Read More
Workshop: On Siza’s March ’77 Sketchbook
22 June 2022
Workshop: On Siza’s March ’77 Sketchbook22 June 2022
– Manuel Montenegro
This audio recording documents a workshop on Álvaro Siza’s Malagueira sketchbook delivered by Manuel Montenegro to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The sketchbook is a record of Siza’s thoughts and responses over three days in 1977, on… Read More
sketch housing DMC