Category: project & building histories

Protected: Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati at Drawing Matter

Protected: Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati at Drawing Matter

Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Francesco Fiammenghi

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Carlos Diniz: London 2025

Carlos Diniz: London 2025

Editors

‘As a piece of urban design [it] is simply abysmal. A wonderful opportunity to create a new place in London with innovative urban forms has been missed… The layout is simplistic and banal, the architecture lumpy and mediocre—the whole looks like a chunk of some ageing, tired and dreary US… Read More

Orgonic Architecture

Orgonic Architecture

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

A face is drawn over a torso; breasts are transformed into eyes with nipples as pupils, the nose curves along the edge of the ribcage, and the belly button is the pursed smoking and kissing mouth, above hangs a necklace made of spherical beads, acting like a curled fringe. The… Read More

DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge

DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge

Laura Harty

As work on site at the Orphanage (1956-1960) neared completion, Aldo van Eyck was busy exploring and expanding the reach of his ideas through a number of interlaced and mutually generative projects, editorial of Forum magazine (1959-63), contributions to the reorganisation and ultimate dissolution of CIAM (1954-1960) and the design of a… Read More

Typology: A conversation

Typology: A conversation

Richard Hall, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner

In Spring 2025, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner corresponded about books which each had recently published that deal with the issue of ‘type’ and the role of drawing in typological work.[1] Hans invited Richard Hall to join the conversation, widening the discussion to three generations working in three… Read More

Melancholy Little Gardens

Melancholy Little Gardens

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Lionel Wallace, the protagonist of H.G. Wells’s The Door in the Wall (1906), was haunted by the vision of an enchanted garden glimpsed in childhood. Having eluded the vigilant and authoritative care of his nursery governess, he found himself wandering aimlessly among the long grey West Kensington roads until he… Read More

Reading Between the Lines: The Language of Structural Engineers

Reading Between the Lines: The Language of Structural Engineers

Gina Morrow

A version of the phrase ‘engineering drawing is a universal language of signs and symbols’ appears in countless engineering drawing textbooks starting in the early twentieth century and continues today. A particularly evocative iteration published in the 1960s states: ‘[Engineering drawing] is a universal language; for the reader may be… Read More

Gio Ponti at Drawing Matter

Gio Ponti at Drawing Matter

Maristella Casciato and Rosie Ellison-Balaam

Gio Ponti (1891-1979) was born in Milan, and while he had ambitions to become an artist, he enrolled in architecture at the Politecnico di Milano in 1913. He completed his studies in 1921 after serving in the war, and in the same year, he opened his firm. Ponti is often… Read More

The Design Legacy of Tamar de Shalit and Arthur Goldreich

The Design Legacy of Tamar de Shalit and Arthur Goldreich

Amos Goldreich

After visiting the Tamart studio in Hoxton to see the collection of drawings by Tamar de Shalit and Arthur Goldreich, and the growing collection of furniture based on their designs, the editors asked Amos Goldreich to write this illustrated account of his parents’ remarkable lives both in South Africa and… Read More

Sourcing Superstudio

Sourcing Superstudio

Martha Cruz

On the 21st page of Natalini’s 12th sketchbook (DMC 2141) there is a list of buildings and landmarks. It feels quite disparate at first. It begins as a chronological list of architecture’s greatest and most recognisable hits: Stonehenge… the Colosseum… the Uffizi… the Taj Mahal… Crystal Palace… the Eiffel Tower.… Read More

Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge. The São Salvador de Figueredo Parish Church by Paulo Providência

Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge. The São Salvador de Figueredo Parish Church by Paulo Providência

Peter Carl

The book Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge is essential reading for anyone interested in Paulo Providência’s renovation of the parish church of São Salvador, Figueredo, 1992-2002, as well as for understanding his singular architectural poetics. A beautifully published suite of drawings (29 pages, including 4 foldouts) and photographs (34 pages) is supported… Read More

Studio Ponis: The Crystal and the Flame

Studio Ponis: The Crystal and the Flame

Irina Davidovici, Niall Hobhouse, Alex Pillen, Jonathan Sergison and Annarita Zalaffi

On Friday 20 June, Drawing Matter welcomed Annarita Zalaffi, Jonathan Sergison, Irina Davidovici, and Alex Pillen to the archive for a conversation about the work of Studio Ponis in Sardinia, and Alberto Ponis and Annarita Zalaffi’s working relationship. The conversation marked the opening of an exhibition of drawings from the… Read More

Le Corbusier at Drawing Matter

Le Corbusier at Drawing Matter

Maristella Casciato and Nicholas Olsberg

Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887-1865) trained in the fine and decorative arts before undertaking travels and varied apprenticeships to develop his architectural skills, opening a studio and teaching practice in La Chaux in 1912, and moving to Paris in 1917 to work principally as a… Read More

Trevor Dannatt’s Riyadh Mosque: A Study in Sacred Space and Cultural Juxtaposition

Trevor Dannatt’s Riyadh Mosque: A Study in Sacred Space and Cultural Juxtaposition

Majed Alghaemdi

Saudi Arabia’s Quest for Modern Identity and the Urban Transformation of Riyadh Beginning in the 1960s, Saudi Arabia embarked on an ambitious building programme, resulting in numerous architectural projects recognised internationally for their remarkable scale as well as their innovative architectural and engineering solutions.[1] This extensive initiative gained substantial momentum from… Read More

AnnaRita Zalaffi: The Engineer at the Heart of Alberto Ponis’ Work

AnnaRita Zalaffi: The Engineer at the Heart of Alberto Ponis’ Work

Alex Pillen

In April, Alex Pillen interviewed AnnaRita Zalaffi over the course of a day at her home in Palau, Sardinia. This text, which focuses on AnnaRita’s early life and her creative collaboration with her husband and professional partner Alberto Ponis, is published to coincide with the exhibition ‘The Crystal and the… Read More

Lisson to Tony Fretton

Lisson to Tony Fretton

Tony Fretton and Ricardo Aboim Inglez

Tony Fretton founded his architectural practice (Tony Fretton Architects) in 1982 in London. He came into international prominence in 1991 after the completion of the second Lisson Gallery building, transforming the street into an urban setting to be absorbed by culture. From his house in London and over two hours,… Read More

Jean Tinguely: La Vittoria

Jean Tinguely: La Vittoria

Editors

In 1970 Pierre Restany and Guido Le Noci, director of the Apollinaire gallery, decided to celebrate, with the help of the municipality of Milan, the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the Nouveaux Réalistes group. On 27 November, ten years after Yves Klein published his single-issue newspaper Le Dimanche 27… Read More

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove —The Study, Pot Plants & Pottery

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove —The Study, Pot Plants & Pottery

Adrian Dannatt

Bringing the outside indoors, merging and blurring nature and culture, extending the garden into the study—such notions, a legacy of a generous North American sense of the landscape, from Fallingwater to the Case Study Houses, may have drifted into cliché but still, there is such glory to the actual open… Read More

River Arno

River Arno

Ivo Poças Martins

In Florence, the flooding of the River Arno on November 4, 1966 was of a magnitude not seen in almost 500 years of history. The city, built on this alluvial plain, was flooded and the river overflowed its banks, filling areas as far away as the Piazza del Duomo with… Read More

The (Im)possible Palimpsest

The (Im)possible Palimpsest

Mattia De Lotto

Preceding the Campo Marzio plan, a plate named Scenographia Campi Martii offers a clue towards an understanding of Piranesi’s work—the terminology is fundamental, the word Scenographia is purposely chosen to make a direct link to the theatrical representation and scenic design, often investigated by Piranesi. The image presented in this… Read More

In the Archive: Abattoirs, Boucheries, and Slaughterhouses

In the Archive: Abattoirs, Boucheries, and Slaughterhouses

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

Click on drawings to move and enlarge. As architectural typologies, abattoirs, boucheries, and slaughterhouses embody the civilising of animal slaughter; serving as concrete expressions of the culture of animal consumption. Over time, the slaughterhouse has evolved in both its structures and perceptions, from a small-scale, craft-based operation rooted in necessity,… Read More

Curtains

Curtains

Petra Blaisse and Sophie Wehtje

Brief email exchanges.  When meeting physically is out of the question, good old-fashioned correspondence still works, even if and for some time now, it is done electronically. This is how many of the editorial pieces on the Drawing Matter website come into being—through a chain of typed messages. It’s a… Read More

Leicester Engineering Building: Un-detailing

Leicester Engineering Building: Un-detailing

Reyner Banham

The building is in many ways as extraordinary as its details. At ground-floor level it confronts the visitor with a blank wall of hard-faced red brick, which is occasionally pierced with a rather private-looking doorway, except at the point where the glazed main-entrance lobby splits this defensive podium into two… Read More

Aldo Rossi at Drawing Matter

Aldo Rossi at Drawing Matter

Editors and Nicholas Olsberg

Aldo Rossi started as a painter, working in the tradition and model of Mario Sironi, whose metaphysical landscapes echo throughout his later work. Although his architectural career commenced with writing, editing and teaching, drawing—especially drawing with colour—remained the principal means to explore and communicate his ideas, and to evoke the… Read More