Category: office cultures
Drawing as Signature: Paul Rudolph and the Perspective Section
12 December 2024
Drawing as Signature: Paul Rudolph and the Perspective Section12 December 2024
The following text delves into the drawing of the perspective section—a spatial and structural design tool as well as a specific type of architectural representation—through the drawings of Paul Rudolph, while also reflecting on a post-war Modern era of architectural design-thinking. The text is included in Reassessing Rudolph, ed. by… Read More
OMA: Rem Koolhaas—Initiative
31 October 2024
OMA: Rem Koolhaas—Initiative31 October 2024
This is the sixth and final post, in the series titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Drawing Without Erasing
21 October 2024
Drawing Without Erasing21 October 2024
The following text first appeared in Drawing without Erasing and Other Essays, by Flores & Prats (Barcelona: Puente editores, 2023), 16-23. Not so long ago, a journalist interviewed us for the British magazine Architecture Today, and the resulting article was called ‘Dirty Drawings’. This suggestive title might bring to mind a… Read More
OMA: Collaborators—Allies
30 September 2024
OMA: Collaborators—Allies30 September 2024
This is the fifth post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
OMA: Big Competitions—Reorienting the Modern Project
29 August 2024
OMA: Big Competitions—Reorienting the Modern Project29 August 2024
This is the fourth post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade
28 June 2024
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade28 June 2024
This is the third post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds
31 May 2024
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds31 May 2024
This is the second post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
O.M. Ungers: Drawing a metaphor
17 May 2024
O.M. Ungers: Drawing a metaphor17 May 2024
– Diogo Lopes and Fanny Noël
This drawing emerged within the framework of a summer school in Berlin, organized by Oswald Mathias Ungers for his Cornell students in 1977. The project was developed by the German architect together with his assistants, Peter Riemann, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Kolhoff and Arthur Ovaska and it offers a vision for… Read More
James Stirling, and the Industrialization of Architecture?
26 April 2024
James Stirling, and the Industrialization of Architecture?26 April 2024
James Stirling’s presentation drawing from 1957 to a faculty of engineers might seem strangely familiar to contemporary architects. A section of a box, showing the structure, services, and how people might dwell inside—it almost anticipates the prefabricated modular construction architects are now being asked to design. Only a few years… Read More
OMA: London—Foreplay
19 April 2024
OMA: London—Foreplay19 April 2024
This is the first post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Design Drawings Damage Atlas (2023)
15 April 2024
Design Drawings Damage Atlas (2023)15 April 2024
Snap, crackle, pop. Oh, that horrible sound of unravelling a roll of architectural drawings on old dried-up tracing paper from the nineteenth century. Slowly unfurling the brown brittle sheet, it cracks and shatters, little bits drop off in flakes, littering the table and floor like confetti. The experience feels like… Read More
Helsinki City Theatre: Timo Penttilä on the real purpose of drawings
12 April 2024
Helsinki City Theatre: Timo Penttilä on the real purpose of drawings12 April 2024
On his retirement in 1998 as professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Finnish architect Timo Penttilä returned to Finland, where he soon made the decision to close his architectural practice. In this process he ordered his staff to destroy the entire office archive of drawings… Read More
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
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
DMJ – Drawing Instruments from Sir John Soane’s Office
25 October 2023
DMJ – Drawing Instruments from Sir John Soane’s Office25 October 2023
This display of drawing instruments, which can be seen in the newly restored Drawing Office at Sir John Soane’s Museum, rather charmingly evokes the atmosphere of the office when in the early nineteenth century it was the busy epicentre of Soane’s architectural practice, filled with his young apprentices and clerks.[1]… Read More
A Christmas Card from Ralph Erskine
6 July 2023
A Christmas Card from Ralph Erskine6 July 2023
Most of us must sometimes receive a message or a drawing that in retrospect we wish we’d retained—but they go astray. In my own case I can recall three: a note from the philosopher Bernard Williams about his friend Thomas Nagel (lost without record) a postcard from Göran Schildt clarifying our… Read More
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse
5 July 2023
Instagram, Indifference, and Postcritique in US Architectural Discourse5 July 2023
The following text is reproduced from The Hybrid Practitioner: Building, Teaching, Researching Architecture (2022), edited by Caroline Voet, Eireen Schreurs, and Helen Thomas. The publication is available in print or as an ebook, here. You can find Joseph Bedford on Instagram here. From the 1970s through the 1990s, many architects… Read More
Hardman & Co.
9 June 2023
Hardman & Co.9 June 2023
My interest in seeing the Hardman & Co. drawings at Drawing Matter was quite personally motivated as I feel a connection to the company. Partially, because I come from Birmingham where the company was based, and because I visited the studios informally in the 1980s with my parents. I was… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: weight26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. They dance.They stand.They stare.They bend.They underline.They comply.They don’t comply.They question.They agree.They dismiss.They provoke.They ignore. Each and every one of them keeps a continuous movement between what… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. First, there were a couple of tense drawings.One, two, three. At the very third second, it quickly escalated to a nonstop dry pastel scratch on A2… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on small papers26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. Kept behind the scenes, singing like mantras: voices in low tune. They flourish and are planted like small seeds.Their synthesis is colourful and schematic.They are all… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: on walls
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: on walls26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. Liberation.When I was a kid, I could not draw on walls. It was forbidden in my parents’ house. At school, we could pin pieces of paper.… Read More
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority
26 May 2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority26 May 2023
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. there is no authority.there is no gravity.there is no fee.there is no programme.there is no agenda.there is no time.there is no client.there is no plot. Creatures.… Read More
JOSÉ OUBRERIE, IN MEMORIAM
21 November 2024
JOSÉ OUBRERIE, IN MEMORIAM21 November 2024
– Luis Burriel Bielza
Very few contemporary buildings take nearly 50 years to be finished. Just this fact tells us a lot about the intensity, resilience, passion and patience of José Oubrerie, who passed away on March 10th, at 91. Aged only 27 when joining the atelier Le Corbusier in 1959, the church of… Read More