Category: on their own work

How Big is Big – Does Scale Matter? A Reflection on Scale in Architecture and Drawing

How Big is Big – Does Scale Matter? A Reflection on Scale in Architecture and Drawing

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

fala: wireframes

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

Fronts and Faces

Lera Samovich

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

fala: comprehensive

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

fala: the single line

fala: the single line

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

Gurdwara

Gurdwara

Ekam Singh

Sikhism is the fifth-largest organised religion in the world. The gurdwara (a door to the guru, a teacher), sometimes referred to as the Sikh temple, is a place of worship for those of the Sikh faith. As a typology, it is under-explored in architectural academia – thought to be a… Read More

Objects That Meet

Objects That Meet

Lars Lerup

Revered objects that move about in design circles and are found in publications, museums, and galleries earn their status through persistence over time. Take two famous chairs, Gerrit Rietveld’s Red Blue chair of 1918–23 and Thomas Lee’s Adirondack chair of 1903. All chairs have met just by being chairs, but… Read More

Dalibor Vesely: Shared Horizons

Dalibor Vesely: Shared Horizons

Biba Dow

Looking at these drawings takes me instantly back to 1993. I am sitting next to Dalibor Vesely at my desk in Scroope Terrace in Cambridge. He is talking quietly and drawing on a stack of tracing paper which he has brought with him. He draws with a light hand in… Read More

Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia

Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia

Matthew Blunderfield and Mabel O. Wilson

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: In 2020 The Memorial to Enslaved Labourers opened at the University of Virginia, designed as a collaboration between Höweler+Yoon Architecture, Mabel O.… Read More

Power & Public Space 5: Mark Wallinger – State Britain

Power & Public Space 5: Mark Wallinger – State Britain

Matthew Blunderfield and Mark Wallinger

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Much of Mark Wallinger’s art exists in public space. He’s made films and performance pieces set in tube stations and airports, and… Read More

Power & Public Space 4: Jonas Žukauskas – Forest Parts

Power & Public Space 4: Jonas Žukauskas – Forest Parts

Matthew Blunderfield and Jonas Žukauskas

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: When we think about public space, we tend to consider the street, the plaza, the park or the square – urban spaces… Read More

Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue

Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue

Matthew Blunderfield and Manuel Herz

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Last year the Swiss practice Manuel Herz Architects completed a wooden synagogue West of Kyiv at Babyn Yar, the site of one… Read More

Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller

Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller

Richard Hall

We recently arranged for Elia Zenghelis to give a presentation under the title ‘The Image as Emblem and Storyteller’ via the Architecture Foundation’s YouTube channel. The talk summarises a thesis that Elia has been continuously developing throughout his career: from OMA’s polemical early work, via decades as one of the… Read More

Power & Public Space 2: Lauren Bon – Bending the River Back to the City

Power & Public Space 2: Lauren Bon – Bending the River Back to the City

Matthew Blunderfield and Lauren Bon

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: The concrete-lined LA River was built on top of a sprawling floodplain, which the land artist Lauren Bon seeks to reveal through… Read More

Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Matthew Blunderfield and Liza Fior

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: The Dalston Eastern Curve garden began as a meanwhile scheme, but over the past decade has embedded itself at the centre of… Read More

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II

Freddie Phillipson

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

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I

Freddie Phillipson

This is part one 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

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction

Freddie Phillipson

This text introduces The Ulysses Project by architect Freddie Phillipson, his exploration of the relationship between the buildings of Dublin and James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, from 17 June – 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international… Read More

Hélène Binet: The Outsider

Hélène Binet: The Outsider

Hélène Binet

a new way of looking at the world Working in my kitchen in the mornings of the 2020 spring.All is silent. Am I silent or is the whole world?In the darkness, you hear better, said Aristotle.In silence and in a closed environment, can you see better? Suddenly the walls of… Read More

‘For the Curiosity of the Article’: Excerpts from Architectural Drawing (1870)

‘For the Curiosity of the Article’: Excerpts from Architectural Drawing (1870)

William Burges

The following introductory text and drawings are reproduced from William Burges’ Architectural Drawing (1870). Each of the drawings has been chosen for its graphic interest or for the content of Burges’ commentary – which covers the problems of surveying buildings, the limits of nineteenth-century book printing, and his personal curiosity in… Read More

Drawing Out, Drawing In: Cartographies for ‘Out of the Sea’

Drawing Out, Drawing In: Cartographies for ‘Out of the Sea’

Beth George

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

Wood & Harrison: A Film About a City

Wood & Harrison: A Film About a City

Paul Harrison and John Wood

We are not architects. I mean, if you insist, we could probably knock something up, but we are not that good at maths, and not really that great with materials. ‘Wood and Harrison – Architects. You’ll be knocked out by our buildings’. But we have always been interested in architecture.… Read More