Category: project & building histories
Capilla Pajaritos
24.08.2023
Capilla Pajaritos24.08.2023
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
21.08.2023
Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield21.08.2023
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
16.08.2023
Chloethiel Woodard Smith16.08.2023
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
Alberto Ponis: Casa Scalesciani
09.08.2023
Alberto Ponis: Casa Scalesciani09.08.2023
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
Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil
31.07.2023
Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil31.07.2023
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
26.07.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Stone Head & Slab26.07.2023
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
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso
17.07.2023
The Palace of Dawn and Dusk / Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso17.07.2023
Alberto Cruz presented the principles of The Palace of Dawn and Dusk (Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso) in the Open City’s Music Room on 19 January 1981[1]. While the initial project comprised four lodges with communal rooms, courtyards, and public baths, ultimately, as Cruz describes, following a ‘poetic revelation’… Read More
Alberto Ponis: Pathways
12.07.2023
Alberto Ponis: Pathways12.07.2023
This is the second 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. Explore more… Read More
William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations
10.07.2023
William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations10.07.2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. The town of Torquay dates from the days when… Read More
A Christmas Card from Ralph Erskine
06.07.2023
A Christmas Card from Ralph Erskine06.07.2023
Most of us must sometimes receive a message or a drawing that in retrospect we wish we’d retained—but they go astray. In my own case I can recall three: a note from the philosopher Bernard Williams about his friend Thomas Nagel (lost without record) a postcard from Göran Schildt clarifying our… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate
04.07.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — House Number & Gate04.07.2023
This is the second 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, and the first text, here. The other sign on the street—blue baked enamel as ur-signifier… Read More
Alberto Ponis: Studio di Yasmin
23.06.2023
Alberto Ponis: Studio di Yasmin23.06.2023
This is the first 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.… Read More
Álvaro Siza: A Vertical Dream
21.06.2023
Álvaro Siza: A Vertical Dream21.06.2023
– António Choupina and Álvaro Siza
In this short video, António Choupina and Álvaro Siza discuss a sketch for an imaginary skyscraper from Caderno 32 (1979), now in the Drawing Matter Collection. Siza describes his interest in Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Mile-High Illinois’ or ‘Sky City’ tower (1957), and his work for Rogério de Azevedo on the… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign
13.06.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Gap and Sign13.06.2023
When my parents bought the house in 1955—for £1,000—one of the first things Trevor did was design this distinctive gap in the wall of the front garden, a modest modernist castle crenelation. This was deliberately aligned with the edge of the house, on a line with the front steps, so… Read More
‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church
30.05.2023
‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church30.05.2023
Peter Celsing won the competition to design the Härlanda Church, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1952, and the church was completed seven years later in 1959. The design of the project is a fragmented list of reflections by the architect in the account reproduced below—which was first drafted on receipts from the… Read More
Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architektur’
12.05.2023
Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architektur’12.05.2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. In January 1917, the architect Bruno… Read More
DMJ – From Hearths to Volcanoes: the Armenian glkhatun
09.05.2023
DMJ – From Hearths to Volcanoes: the Armenian glkhatun09.05.2023
This text is the last peer-reviewed essay published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023) Print copies of the Journal and subscriptions for the first three issues are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. ‘Often a traveller… Read More
Accademia Bridge Proposals: Venice Biennale 1985
28.04.2023
Accademia Bridge Proposals: Venice Biennale 198528.04.2023
– Editors
This project scrapbook was prompted by Drawing Matter’s recent acquisition of drawings by Peter Wilson and Luc Deleu, made in response to Aldo Rossi’s ‘Progetto Venezia’ brief for the 1985 Venice Biennale, which invited proposals for a new Accademia Bridge to replace the wooden one constructed in the 1930s. Wilson… Read More
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia
26.04.2023
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia26.04.2023
In the years prior to the commencement of his major built works, Bridgebuilding No.4 Ponte dell’Accademia holds a critical position within the formative projects of the architect Peter Wilson. The design was prepared in response to an open international architecture competition that was launched under Aldo Rossi’s directorship of the… Read More
T.O.P. Office and the Accademia Bridge
24.04.2023
T.O.P. Office and the Accademia Bridge24.04.2023
In a way, this project was architecturally ‘ready-made’. Our proposal for the Accademia Bridge can best be seen as an example of recycling and reuse. Formally, it sublimates what is available from a limitation of resources and materials. In the concept lies a wink to the (still naive in my… Read More
MJ Long’s Doll House
31.03.2023
MJ Long’s Doll House31.03.2023
In 2018, I met the architect MJ Long at her home. Located in a building designed and constructed in the 1930s by Thomas Tait, it doubled as Long’s studio. It was formerly the home and studio of the sculptor Sir William Dick Reid; MJ Long and her husband Sandy (Colin… Read More
Richard Neutra’s Corona Avenue School
22.03.2023
Richard Neutra’s Corona Avenue School22.03.2023
This project scrapbook traces the publication and exhibition history of Richard Neutra’s experimental Corona Avenue School, built in 1935 after the Los Angeles earthquake of 1933. The material for this scrapbook has been compiled by Nicholas Olsberg; his earlier text on the school for Drawing Matter can be read here.
Quinta da Malagueira
11.08.2023
Quinta da Malagueira11.08.2023
– 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
sketch plan DMC