Category: drawing techniques & materials
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s Architecture of Abstraction
15 January 2021
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s Architecture of Abstraction15 January 2021
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s The Marriage of Reason and Squalor series may rightly be called barbaric. ‘Barbarism? Yes indeed,’ writes Walter Benjamin in his 1933 essay, Experience and Poverty. ‘We say this in order to introduce a new positive concept of barbarism. For what does poverty of experience do for the… Read More
Architecture at the Edge
13 January 2021
Architecture at the Edge13 January 2021
– Craig Moller and Marco Moro
The following is a conversation between Marco Moro and Craig Moller, New Zealand-born architect and author of the drawing pictured above. Moller made the drawing while in a design studio taught by Mark Wigley in 1985, while the latter was about to finish his doctoral thesis within the newly established… Read More
The Fun Palace: Light Adaptation
8 January 2021
The Fun Palace: Light Adaptation8 January 2021
Techniques of architectural drawing have been developed according to the physics of light and our perception of its effects. From the origins of two-dimensional representation – often mythologized in the act of tracing a projected silhouette on a flat surface – to practices of atmospheric simulation in rendering, recognized patterns of light have become essential in the communication of architecture’s spatial… Read More
The Values of Profiles (1951)
8 January 2021
The Values of Profiles (1951)8 January 2021
Provoked by the assertion of rational architecture, the beginnings of modern non-figurative art coincide in time with the exclusion from the world of living forms of cornices and profiles, the most evidently ‘abstract’ elements of ancient architecture. At least two reasons may be relevant to this singular phenomenon: one is… Read More
Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints
21 December 2020
Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints21 December 2020
They began to bloom on websites a couple of years or so ago – stretching out on social media, unfurling in the arts sections. Pale alien shapes suspended in deep blue: something like lightning flattened in a flower press; a sleeping creature emerging from a cloud of coral; a spectral… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Pens down, Braid up
17 December 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Pens down, Braid up17 December 2020
Hair, silky, wavy or coiled, somewhere, is felt by us all. It is one of the first things we play with, we shape and mold, unconsciously or artfully. Beginning as a line, slack and tentative, a hair appears as a strike of fine ink. Collected and carefully teased each strand… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 5: Andrés Jaque
16 December 2020
Pan Scroll Zoom 5: Andrés Jaque16 December 2020
– Fabrizio Gallanti and Andrés Jaque
This is the fifth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio interviews Andrés Jaque, founder of the Office for Political Innovation… Read More
Drawing, Collaging, Rendering
9 December 2020
Drawing, Collaging, Rendering9 December 2020
When the ‘hard-line drawing’ has become so synonymous with the image of the architect it is easy to forget that the convenience of the everyday pen is relatively recent. For most of the long history of the world’s second-oldest profession, pen, paint and ink were reserved for competition boards or… Read More
Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints
7 December 2020
Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints7 December 2020
An intriguing Italian Renaissance drawing from the mid-sixteenth century has recently received critical attention through Drawing Matter. [1] Both the recto and the verso of the paper sheet have an ancient temple plan in perspective in a landscape setting, drawn in brown ink and attributed to the Sangallo circle as… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered
5 December 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered5 December 2020
– Laura Bonell and Daniel López-Dòriga
Around 200 AD, a map of the city of Rome was carved on marble at a scale of approximately 1:240. It measured 18 meters wide by 13 meters high and comprised 150 marble slabs hung on an interior wall of the Templum Pacis. The Forma Urbis Romae or Severan Marble Plan, as… Read More
Collection of Sections
2 December 2020
Collection of Sections2 December 2020
The following drawings and commentaries have been excerpted from Visual Discoveries: A Collection of Sections (Oro Editions, 2020). The publication surveys the use of section drawings in the histories of architecture and other professions, from the 17th century to the present. More information on the book can be found here.… Read More
On a handrail
30 November 2020
On a handrail30 November 2020
What drew me to the drawings Tony made, and the handrail itself, is the line it treads between standardisation and customisation. The way in which, for instance, standard sections of steel are bundled together and expressed to form thicker newel posts or to hold the glazing panels of the balustrade.… Read More
Aldo Rossi: the First Sketch and the Final Drawing
25 November 2020
Aldo Rossi: the First Sketch and the Final Drawing25 November 2020
The following letter was sent to the Drawing Matter editors by Andrea Leonardi, a member of Rossi’s office for nine years. A few days ago my dear friend Maurizio Diton, sent me an article he wrote for you in October 2019, ‘The Office Copier and Baptism by Colour: Working… Read More
Drawing is discovery (1953)
24 November 2020
Drawing is discovery (1953)24 November 2020
For the artist drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase, it is quite literally true. It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him, to dissect it in his mind’s eye and put it together… Read More
Outside In
23 November 2020
Outside In23 November 2020
Music plays from behind a curtain. Lights come on and you see that the curtain runs along two sides of a carpet whose centre hosts a leopard skin cushion. There is a chair at one side of the carpet and at the opposite end, a single column. Not before long… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 4: Pezo von Ellrichshausen
18 November 2020
Pan Scroll Zoom 4: Pezo von Ellrichshausen18 November 2020
– Sofia von Ellrichshausen, Fabrizio Gallanti and Mauricio Pezo
This is the fourth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio interviews Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen of Pezo von… Read More
Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric
17 November 2020
Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric17 November 2020
One way to think about an axonometric drawing is as a perspective with the vanishing point at infinity. This means that the lines of projection are parallel, which assures dimensional consistency. Early treatises, for example, spoke of parallel projection as analogous to shadows cast by the sun; not, strictly speaking,… Read More
Bramante: Five Dots
16 November 2020
Bramante: Five Dots16 November 2020
The remote past is distant and faded. Original objects and documents that might be used to study it are scarce. They are often uncooperative and most of the time they don’t tell the truth, because they have been reframed by history’s ‘victors’ over the centuries. We must always bear in… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing
13 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing13 November 2020
Similar to many of Rossi’s drawings, the Urban Fragment presents us with a collection of his most cherished forms – a primordial tower, the hand of a saint, and fragments of his own projects, such as the Gallaratese 2 housing complex in Milan and the Cemetery of San Cataldo. In… Read More
All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture
9 November 2020
All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture9 November 2020
In Louis de Boulogne’s drawing, now in the Drawing Matter collection, Architecture appears as a young woman. She sits leaning on an altar with a Corinthian capital at her feet, compasses in one hand and a portrait of Vignola in the other. Behind her are the ruins of Rome. It… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant
9 November 2020
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant9 November 2020
‘Through modesty, restraint, and measured discipline, immeasurable delights are made possible.’ James Corner, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (1996) C. To measure a croissant, we might: 1.1 Evaluate all ingredients involved: flour, sugar, milk, yeast, salt and butter. 1.2 Count the number of folds the butter and dough must… Read More
Trees Move In
22 October 2020
Trees Move In22 October 2020
The following text is the second of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us to reproduce the essays on… Read More
Palladio’s Lines
15 October 2020
Palladio’s Lines15 October 2020
Andrea Palladio’s Il Quattro Libri dell’architettura (Venice, 1570) is a seminal document in the history and theory of architecture. The treatise projects the knowledge of both architectural form and its image. The formation of this knowledge is documented within Palladio’s work textually and visually. The work conveys both the formation… Read More
Two Early Paintings with OMA
25 January 2021
Two Early Paintings with OMA25 January 2021
– Zoe Zenghelis
Here, Zoe Zenghelis, painter and founding member of OMA, recalls the making of two paintings now in the Drawing Matter collection. The first, pictured below, is an aerial view of the unbuilt Hotel Therma, and the second is a version of OMA’s entry to the Parc de la Villette competition.… Read More
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