Category: project & building histories
Protected: Collection Guide: OMA
15.10.2026
Protected: Collection Guide: OMA15.10.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Warburg’s Ellipse and Holden’s Grid
09.10.2026
Warburg’s Ellipse and Holden’s Grid09.10.2026
– Graham Haworth and Bill Sherman
This text is an edited and illustrated conversation between Bill Sherman (Director of the Warburg Institute) and Graham Haworth (Co-Founder of Stirling Prize-winning architects Haworth Tompkins. From 2018 to 2024, Haworth Tompkins worked with the Warburg Institute on the renovation and extension of its building in Bloomsbury—designed by Charles Holden… Read More
Asplund’s Villa Snellman: An Oblique View
08.10.2026
Asplund’s Villa Snellman: An Oblique View08.10.2026
Situated sometime and somewhere between Paul Cézanne and the Villa Savoye, in the second decade of the twentieth century, is Erik Gunnar Asplund’s Villa Snellman. The building was designed and constructed between 1917 and 1918 for a bank director, and is situated in Djursholm, a suburb of Stockholm. At first… Read More
For Peter Salter
28.09.2026
For Peter Salter28.09.2026
1. Very few stories are narrated either to idealise or condemn: rather they testify to the always slightly surprising range of the possible. Although concerned with everyday events, they are mystery stories.[1] In an appreciation of Alison and Peter Smithson, Peter Salter spoke of them as skilled storytellers.[2] In particular,… Read More
Building a Site: Between Tradition and Modernity – Asplund’s Summerhouse in Stennäs
21.09.2026
Building a Site: Between Tradition and Modernity – Asplund’s Summerhouse in Stennäs21.09.2026
In 1936, four years before his death, Erik Gunnar Asplund designed his own house on a site with unique characteristics, irregular topography, and rocky outcrops. Known as the summerhouse in Stennäs, it remains a timeless architectural case study. The house embodies an architectural idea, a distinct approach to the tenets… Read More
The Indeterminate Building: Grimshaw’s ‘Action Factory’ for Herman Miller
15.09.2026
The Indeterminate Building: Grimshaw’s ‘Action Factory’ for Herman Miller15.09.2026
In 1975, following a closed competition during which Norman Foster and James Stirling were also approached, the Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership were invited to design a new factory for the American furniture company Herman Miller. Five years earlier, the company had set up a salesroom and workshop in Bath in the former… Read More
Shed no. 78, Anchor Lane
14.09.2026
Shed no. 78, Anchor Lane14.09.2026
In 2020, I came across James Maude Richards’ publication The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings, in which I saw, for the first time, Eric de Maré’s photographs of Shed no. 78, also known as the ‘Boat Store’, located in Sheerness Dockyard on the Isle of Sheppey.[1] Astounded by the construction… Read More
DMJ – Notes on Derek Boshier
11.09.2026
DMJ – Notes on Derek Boshier 11.09.2026
Derek Boshier’s 16 Situations (1971) could be experienced both in print and as an installation. The exhibition, which toured from early 1971 before being shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in September and October 1973, was simple in concept: the viewer followed a wall with 16 altered photographic images, each one with the… Read More
Collection Guide: John Ruskin
27.08.2026
Collection Guide: John Ruskin27.08.2026
– Editors
Drawing Matter holds a mineral collection compiled by John Ruskin for the St David’s Boys’ Preparatory School in Reigate, Surrey. The school later relocated to Stone House in Broadstairs and the mineral collection moved with it. Donated in 1883, the specimens were chosen from Ruskin’s personal collection, yet his idea… Read More
Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation
24.08.2026
Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation24.08.2026
– Michael Gold and Dalibor Vesely
The following text, ‘The Dialogue of Representation’ by Dalibor Vesely, was published in People in Architecture, the book featuring the exhibition of work by Michael Gold’s AA Unit 5 students held at the Architectural Association, 4–29 October 1983. Read a response to the exhibition by Peter Wilson here. Drawing Matter… Read More
A Palimpsest in Line: A Graphic Biography of the Hasselt Beguinage
21.08.2026
A Palimpsest in Line: A Graphic Biography of the Hasselt Beguinage21.08.2026
– Koenraad Van Cleempoel and Joshua Kempen
The revitalisation of the Hasselt Beguinage and its transformation into the Faculty of Architecture and Arts has created an opportunity to reconsider the role of drawing as a critical mode of inquiry in adaptive reuse. Rather than treating drawing as a purely representational tool, the project frames it as an… Read More
Collection Guide: Cedric Price
03.08.2026
Collection Guide: Cedric Price03.08.2026
– Editors
Cedric Price (1934–2003) studied architecture at Cambridge University before receiving his diploma from the Architectural Association (AA) in 1957. He went on to teach at the AA and worked in the offices of Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun before founding his own practice in 1960. Though the majority of Price’s… Read More
The Visual Origins of Circulation in Architecture
09.07.2026
The Visual Origins of Circulation in Architecture09.07.2026
Amidst the architecture historians, the comparison between the plan of Borromini’s church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and that of one of Bramante’s four pillars supporting the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is well-known. Though I could not find the name of the historian who conceived it, it definitely… Read More
Collection Guide: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
06.07.2026
Collection Guide: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc06.07.2026
The French Neo-Gothic architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) was one of the defining figures of nineteenth-century architecture worldwide. He transformed the restoration and interpretation of medieval monuments, championed structural rationalism, and reinvented drawing and publishing as tools for disseminating architectural knowledge. By the time of his death, he had become the… Read More
Protected: The Temple
29.06.2026
Protected: The Temple29.06.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON
22.06.2026
Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON22.06.2026
– Editors
Peter Wilson and Julia Bolles are the founding partners of Architekturbüro BOLLES+WILSON. Peter Wilson was born in Australia, he studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the Architectural Association, where he later taught from 1974–1988 (Diploma Unit Master 1980–88). Julia Bolles was born in Münster and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of… Read More
Unseen Bodies
19.06.2026
Unseen Bodies19.06.2026
This drawing explores how the human body has been depicted, understood, and imagined in Danish architectural and design education over the past 270 years. It represents a study of more than two hundred public and private archival materials sourced from various contemporary educational institutions, libraries, and archives across Denmark.[1] The… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove – La maison où j’ai grandi
11.06.2026
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove – La maison où j’ai grandi11.06.2026
This is the eighth and concluding part of Adrian Dannatt’s series of reflections on his family home, frequently remodelled and extended over 45 years from 1955, by his father, the architect Trevor Dannatt. Read the introduction to the series here. * Curtains The newly restored house appeared, on the cover no… Read More
Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium
29.05.2026
Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium29.05.2026
Apart from the extraordinary dynamism of the composition, one of the most striking things about this drawing of Owen Luder’s design for a new stadium for Sunderland A.F.C. is that the people heading towards the turnstiles aren’t wearing red and white. Indeed, the figures are not your usual football fans—today,… Read More
The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad
28.05.2026
The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad28.05.2026
– Editors
In the first three months of 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum presented a small exhibition dedicated to Le Corbusier’s unrealised Olympic Stadium Project for Baghdad. The show was organised by the RIBA, Irena Murray, and Peter Carl, with work loaned from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the Fondation… Read More
Protected: Up in the Air: The Heygate and Aylesbury Estates
27.05.2026
Protected: Up in the Air: The Heygate and Aylesbury Estates27.05.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing
25.05.2026
Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing25.05.2026
The first thing to be said about the drawings of Carlos Bedoya is that this is not an exercise in nostalgia, or a case for the lost art of drawing by hand. The architects of PRODUCTORA work in the present, with all the tools and techniques available to them. The… Read More
DMJ – Where to Find a Drawing of a Swiss Gold Vault
12.10.2026
DMJ – Where to Find a Drawing of a Swiss Gold Vault12.10.2026
– Ludo Groen
If you really want to learn where to find the mountain vaults of Swiss banks, and what they look like, the first thing you should know is that the archives vigilantly kept by almost all banks in Switzerland are not publicly accessible – and even when they are, the last… Read More
DMJ 3 – Storytelling plan