Category: on their own work
Shatwell Farm: A Step Up
6 July 2021
Shatwell Farm: A Step Up6 July 2021
Imagined as something in between a small building or piece of furniture and a block for mounting a horse, these steps are a shortcut to an out-of-sight sauna that sits above a slope amongst the trees. They are directly visible when leaving the dairy house, sitting to one side of… Read More
Disinformation: Closed Circuit
30 June 2021
Disinformation: Closed Circuit30 June 2021
If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer, even, than architecture, which Le Corbusier rightly says can best be felt at night. – Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964. ‘Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space,… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 13: Tatiana Bilbao
1 June 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 13: Tatiana Bilbao1 June 2021
– Tatiana Bilbao and Fabrizio Gallanti
This is the thirteenth 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 Tatiana Bilbao about her teaching at Yale School of Architecture and… Read More
BOLLES+WILSON: Sketching-Over Albania
27 May 2021
BOLLES+WILSON: Sketching-Over Albania27 May 2021
Having devoted a number of years to techniques and images engendered by holding a wood encased rod of graphite, I some years ago experienced a sort of premature redundancy, noticing that those about me husbanding architecture were now mysteriously clutching not a pencil but a mouse. I had already technologically… Read More
Diagrams: Hans van der Heijden in Conversation with Richard Hall
5 May 2021
Diagrams: Hans van der Heijden in Conversation with Richard Hall5 May 2021
Hans van der Heijden is an Amsterdam-based architect. He co-founded biq in 1994 with Rick Wessels before establishing his own office, Hans van der Heijden Architect, in 2014. During this timeframe he has developed a recognisable and idiosyncratic drawing repertoire, the origins of which can be traced back to his… Read More
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness
27 April 2021
Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness27 April 2021
– Editors
With thanks to Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this tribute to Sekine written on the first anniversary of the artist’s death (linked here).
Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)
26 April 2021
Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)26 April 2021
Filmed in 1964, Ron Parks’ documentary on the newly completed Engineering Department at Leicester catches James Stirling and James Gowan at a moment of professional triumph and personal crisis. Their building was being applauded the world-over – Parks’ film had been commissioned by the American Institute of Architects, to mark its… Read More
Open Wide / Wide Open
22 April 2021
Open Wide / Wide Open22 April 2021
We started with six words: a short-term dwelling for an artist then added: with a child What adaptations have you made to your domestic space since having a child? / What adaptations have you made to your work space since having a child? / How / When / Where do… Read More
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material
21 April 2021
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material21 April 2021
– Editors
The following quotations are from ‘Mein Stoff für Fassaden (My Facade Material)’, a lecture delivered online by Peter Märkli to open a series of five talks for the Architecture Foundation. The quotations are presented here in a loose fashion, some treated as aphorisms about design, others illustrated with drawings from… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 11: Architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck
19 April 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 11: Architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck19 April 2021
– Fabrizio Gallanti, Inge Vinck and Jan De Vylder
This is the eleventh 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 Jan De Vylder and Inge Vinck about their teaching… Read More
The Architecture of Nothingness: Analysing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple
12 April 2021
The Architecture of Nothingness: Analysing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple12 April 2021
The Architecture of Nothingness: Drawing the Drawings As architects we have learned to read drawings almost instantly. At a glance we see what the spaces feel like, what it will be like to move around the building and perhaps even get a sense of the appropriateness of the structure. This ‘presentational’ way… Read More
Place and Displacement: Rubbings from Architecture
12 April 2021
Place and Displacement: Rubbings from Architecture12 April 2021
The process of making a rubbing transcends the traditional boundaries of architectural draughtsmanship and illustration. A rubbing is made by placing a sheet of paper over an object or textured surface and burnishing its surface with a drawing medium such as graphite or charcoal. Many of us might associate the… Read More
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): REVIEW & EXCERPTS
30 March 2021
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): REVIEW & EXCERPTS30 March 2021
Review Making a book about making a building creates a special narrative challenge in the constant battle between reality and myth that vibrates through non-fiction publications and the ways in which we as readers engage with and interpret them. This is complicated even more when making a book about a… Read More
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield
26 March 2021
Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield26 March 2021
The Site Plan was one of the Planning drawings prepared for submission to Chelmsford District Council and Essex County Council. It is A1 size and drawn on Wiggins Teape 112 gram ‘Gateway’ tracing paper. The East Hanningfield job was the first on which ‘A’ sized paper had been used in… Read More
Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things
8 March 2021
Glasgow School of Art: The Measure of Things8 March 2021
The following text was first published in The Library: Glasgow School of Art (2014), edited by Mark Baines, John Barr and Christopher Platt. The text describes Paul Clarke’s process of surveying Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s library at the Glasgow School of Art, which he undertook in 1993. When the library was… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 7: MOS
25 February 2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 7: MOS25 February 2021
– Fabrizio Gallanti, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample
This is the seventh 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 Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of the New York-based… Read More
Stan Allen’s Situated Objects (2020): Review & Excerpt
24 February 2021
Stan Allen’s Situated Objects (2020): Review & Excerpt24 February 2021
Review Three times a week a package arrives in Somerset with another Practice Monograph, and the generous proposal that we might want to add it to the library at Drawing Matter. This is clearly an old story – somewhere we have a copy of one of John Soane’s endless books… Read More
Re-presenting the Rococo
24 February 2021
Re-presenting the Rococo24 February 2021
In October 2017, I travelled to the outskirts of Munich to spend three days in the company of Johann Michael Fischer’s church of St Michael at Berg am Laim with the purpose of presenting it in drawings and photographs. The trip was sponsored by the Drawing Matter Trust and was intended to act as… Read More
Take One: Architects on Drawing
23 February 2021
Take One: Architects on Drawing23 February 2021
– Editors
Take One is a collaboration between Drawing Matter and the Architects’ Lives oral history project run by National Life Stories. Each episode pairs a drawing or visual element with a short audio extract, showing the image alongside the voice of its creator or an informed commentator. The audio extracts are taken from life… Read More
The House and the Sketch
25 January 2021
The House and the Sketch25 January 2021
288 sketches precede the design of a house. Each one starts again from zero. None for more than a few seconds. Never larger than a few centimeters. With each repetition of the loop, the house searches for itself. For the first 287 pages, it did not know what it was… Read More
Two Early Paintings with OMA
25 January 2021
Two Early Paintings with OMA25 January 2021
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
Keeping a Notebook
24 June 2021
Keeping a Notebook24 June 2021
– Simon Unwin
Looking into other people’s notebooks is to witness moments of creative exploration and growth. A graphic facility in others can provoke envy, but being given access into someone else’s mind and seeing where it wanders is always stimulating. As the examples published by Drawing Matter illustrate, architects’ notebooks harbour many… Read More
plan record sketch