Category: project & building histories
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers
09.11.2023
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers09.11.2023
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Manufacture of Architecture: Joseph Paxton and the Development of the Great Stove
09.11.2023
The Manufacture of Architecture: Joseph Paxton and the Development of the Great Stove09.11.2023
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. Joseph… Read More
Fragments of a Polychrome Mosaic of a Roman Bath Building
08.11.2023
Fragments of a Polychrome Mosaic of a Roman Bath Building08.11.2023
This polychrome mosaic, discovered in 1872 in Rome near Termini train station, is the only mosaic depiction of a plan of a bath building known from the Roman period. Only three fragments were recovered, representing less than five percent of the original mosaic whose dimensions approximated 3.40 x 5.70 m. Two… Read More
Connor Street: Made by Many Hands
03.11.2023
Connor Street: Made by Many Hands03.11.2023
The following text is the first in a series by architect Kieran Hawkins, Director of Cairn, tracing the design and construction of an extension to a Victorian House in East London, recounting the everyday realities of the project and, in the green text, the broader environmental issues incumbent on architects to address. The texts have been developed… Read More
Repton does a Bernini – A Crescent for The Ham
24.10.2023
Repton does a Bernini – A Crescent for The Ham24.10.2023
Ever since 1743, when John Wood failed to get backers for his vast Royal Forum, the area to the south of South Parade has been treated like the campus of a nondescript university. The chequered gardens of Abbey Orchard have been supplanted by Manvers Street car park, while to the… Read More
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once
20.10.2023
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once20.10.2023
In this film Stephen Bates discusses a group of drawings by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Upper Lawn Pavilion, dating from the late 1950s when the Smithsons bought the site, and the 1970s when the architects proposed several alterations—only some of which were realised. Stephen Bates’ relationship with the… Read More
François Cointeraux: the Architect of the ‘Agricultural Proletariat’
05.10.2023
François Cointeraux: the Architect of the ‘Agricultural Proletariat’05.10.2023
François Cointeraux was born in Lyon in 1740 and was introduced to agriculture and construction at an early age through his family’s business ventures. When his uncle designated him the ‘universal heir’ of his company, Cointeraux inherited several buildings in Lyon and around 24 houses in the area. His marriage… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Garage door trio
18.09.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Garage door trio18.09.2023
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
12.09.2023
Architecture and Real Abstraction: Adler & Sullivan12.09.2023
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. The… Read More
Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape
30.08.2023
Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape30.08.2023
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
28.08.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension28.08.2023
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
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
Quinta da Malagueira
11.08.2023
Quinta da Malagueira11.08.2023
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
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 — I’m Going to Get Medieval on Your Ass!
16.11.2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — I’m Going to Get Medieval on Your Ass!16.11.2023
– Adrian Dannatt
‘I’m going to get medieval on your ass!’ Any analogy between the hefty massing of the middle-ages and soi-disant Brutalism is here revived in the bold metal hinges of our garage door, worthy of some château fort. Likewise the solid lead parapet of the roof could well guard a fortress, if also reminiscent of the… Read More
St Mary's Grove (series) DMC detail domestic