Category: drawing techniques & materials
Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints
07.12.2020
Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints07.12.2020
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
Collection of Sections
02.12.2020
Collection of Sections02.12.2020
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
30.11.2020
On a Handrail30.11.2020
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
25.11.2020
Aldo Rossi: The First Sketch and the Final Drawing25.11.2020
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)
24.11.2020
Drawing is discovery (1953)24.11.2020
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
23.11.2020
Outside In23.11.2020
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
18.11.2020
Pan Scroll Zoom 4: Pezo von Ellrichshausen18.11.2020
– 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
17.11.2020
Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric17.11.2020
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
16.11.2020
Bramante: Five Dots16.11.2020
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
13.11.2020
Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing13.11.2020
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
09.11.2020
All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture09.11.2020
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
09.11.2020
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant09.11.2020
‘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
22.10.2020
Trees Move In22.10.2020
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
15.10.2020
Palladio’s Lines15.10.2020
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
S.A.U.L. 4th Year: De Rerum Natura / In the Manner Of
13.10.2020
S.A.U.L. 4th Year: De Rerum Natura / In the Manner Of13.10.2020
– Gerard Carty, Elizabeth Hatz and Fionn O'Leary
In the Autumn of 2019, tutors Elizabeth Hatz and Gerard Carty visited the Drawing Matter archive with their fourth-year students from the School of Architecture and the University of Limerick (SAUL). Below is a record of their visit and its place in the context of the fourth-year studio. Tutors interested… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Figures of War
29.09.2020
Writing Prize 2020: Figures of War29.09.2020
Niccolò Machiavelli concludes his treatise on the art of war (Dell’Arte della Guerra, 1521) with a series of diagrammatic ‘figures’ illustrating the arrangements of troops known as ordinanze. Rather than using human silhouettes, the ordinanza links alphabetical signs to specific roles and positions of the soldiers, reducing the army to… Read More
Just Begin: The Convent Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette
28.07.2020
Just Begin: The Convent Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette28.07.2020
– Stan Allen and José Oubrerie
‘The first line on paper,’ Louis Kahn once said, ‘is already a measure of what cannot be expressed fully.’ This captures perfectly the anxiety of beginnings: not what is to be expressed, but everything that will be left out, and an inevitable sense of loss over all the unexplored possibilities.… Read More
The Wobbly Line: Asplund, Johansson and the Influence of Tessenow in Sweden 1915–1925
27.07.2020
The Wobbly Line: Asplund, Johansson and the Influence of Tessenow in Sweden 1915–192527.07.2020
There is a drawing in a 1923 issue of the Swedish trade journal Byggmästaren (The Master-Builder). It is part of a presentation of a new three-storey house by the architect Cyrillus Johansson. To illustrate his text the architect has included photos and a drawing of the front elevation and a plan of… Read More
OMA in Scheveningen
22.07.2020
OMA in Scheveningen22.07.2020
Scheveningen is a reef on which different architectonic and urban visions have run ashore. – Rem Koolhaas [1] What a surprise to see this 40 year old drawing! I made it as a young collaborator of OMA in Rotterdam in 1982. It is an analytic sketch in ink and color… Read More
Fresh and Surprised
02.07.2020
Fresh and Surprised02.07.2020
Indische Buurt is a suburban area at the eastern edge of Amsterdam that is rich with diverse ethnicities, building ages and spatial experiences. The streets are named after islands and, as a territory historically built upon reclaimed land, there is an overriding feeling of an archipelago: islands that are places… Read More
Library of Babel
29.06.2020
Library of Babel29.06.2020
In its most rudimentary form, a LIDAR scan is a simple act of call and response. Thousands of beams of light leave the scanner and receive a measurement based on the distance and intensity (essentially a value of reflectivity) of the objects they collide with. The fascination in these scans… Read More
James Gowan: The Sheet for the Job
17.06.2020
James Gowan: The Sheet for the Job17.06.2020
The elevation of the Engineering Faculty in Leicester, a building by James Stirling and James Gowan, is in the centre of the tracing paper: a drawing composed of vertical, horizontal and diagonal black lines. A series of height lines and dimensions have been applied effectively, showing that the construction is… Read More
Stirling at Stuttgart: Rear View / Up Views
15.06.2020
Stirling at Stuttgart: Rear View / Up Views15.06.2020
Rear Views I joined the Stirling office in September 1976, working late hours through the length of four years until my return to Dublin towards the end of 1980. Straight out of college and into my first proper job, the critical years in my formation as an architect. I had… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered
05.12.2020
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered05.12.2020
– 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
drawing matter writing prize 2020 plan domestic graphic design interior