Category: project & building histories

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Garage door trio

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Garage door trio

Adrian Dannatt

No sooner had I written about the door hook than my mother, sharp as ever at 98, revealed that the original had been stolen, along with parts of the front gate, presumably for their metal value. This hook was definitely her replacement, from Franchi on the Holloway Road, whilst the first… Read More

Architecture and Real Abstraction: Adler & Sullivan

Architecture and Real Abstraction: Adler & Sullivan

Francesco Marullo

This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. The… Read More

Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape

Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape

Team SHICHAI拾柴

This is film was made by team SHICHAI拾柴 for the exhibition ‘Drawing Landscape: Alberto Ponis,’ exhibited at Tongji University, Shanghai, 10 April—20 May 2023. It concludes a series of posts on Drawing Matter pairing team SHICHAI拾柴’s films with drawings from our collection; find these in the ‘related reading’ below.

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension

Adrian Dannatt

Liza Fior, whose phone was used to take these snaps (I still refuse the portable-telephone obligation), was particularly taken by this hook for the garage door, the way it hangs, the perhaps deliberate chipping into the stone, ‘I am sure he planned it’. That minute attention to the smallest thing,… Read More

Capilla Pajaritos

Capilla Pajaritos

Alberto Cruz

The following text was written by Alberto Cruz as an account of the project for a small chapel outside of Santiago (1952–3; first published in Spanish in 1954). It describes an unfolding process of design, framed around the guiding principles of observation, act, and, form—the key tenets of Cruz’s architectural… Read More

Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield

Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield

Nicholas Olsberg

This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. In… Read More

Chloethiel Woodard Smith

Chloethiel Woodard Smith

Kathleen James-Chakraborty

In June 2023 Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Professor of Art History at University College Dublin, gave a talk about American modernist architect and urban planner Chloethiel Woodard Smith. Part of the series ‘Rethinking Architectural Legacies’ at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the talk was titled ‘How to Succeed as a Woman: Chloethiel Woodard… Read More

Quinta da Malagueira

Quinta da Malagueira

Pier Vittorio Aureli

In this short text Pier Vittorio Aureli reflects on Quinta da Malagueira housing project in what he sees as a potential convergence between formal principals and political intentions. Quinta da Malagueira is perhaps the last great ‘social housing project’. That is, it is the last great architectural contribution to the… Read More

Alberto Ponis: Casa Scalesciani

Alberto Ponis: Casa Scalesciani

Team SHICHAI拾柴

This is the third of a series of posts pairing films made by team SHICHAI拾柴 with drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. The films, of houses designed by Alberto Ponis on Sardinia, were made for the exhibition ‘Drawing Landscape: Alberto Ponis,’ exhibited at Tongji University, Shanghai, 10 April—20 May 2023. View more… Read More

A Gentler Giant

A Gentler Giant

Leif Findlay

Faced with the grand statues of Ramesses II in Abu Simbel, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi wrote ‘We are filled with profound emotion in the presence of these colossal witnesses, centuries old, of a past that to us is almost infinite, at whose feet so many generations, so many million existences, so… Read More

Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil

Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil

David G. De Long

The renderings for Frank Lloyd Wright’s unbuilt Memorial to the Soil (1936) show the project’s incorporation of earth berms as a major component of its design. In a sense, the earth itself became architecture. About his design, as inscribed on the pencil drawing above, Wright wrote that the project was… Read More

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Stone Head & Slab

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Stone Head & Slab

Adrian Dannatt

A carved stone head by Theo Crosby, given as a moving-in gift back in the mid-fifties and much weathered ever since, amongst the bosky foothills of the front steps. For aesthetic law insists that ‘outdoor’ sculpture must be shown as such and allowed to return to nature, obeying its original… Read More