Category: project & building histories
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
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.
Construct
13.03.2023
Construct13.03.2023
In 1975, OMA (the Office for Metropolitan Architecture) produced two projects for Roosevelt Island (formerly Welfare Island), in New York’s East River, between Manhattan and Queens. The thin sliver of land—historically treated as ‘a storehouse for “undesirables”’ [1]—was undergoing a process of redevelopment under the New York State Urban Development… Read More
Ghost Parking Lot
10.03.2023
Ghost Parking Lot10.03.2023
SITE, an architecture and environmental art group, was founded in 1970 for the purpose of exploring new ways to bring a heightened level of communication and psychological content to buildings, interiors, and public spaces. Originally organised to research, assemble, and publish international documentation on other artists and architects of similar… Read More
DMJ – Asphalt Tales and the Ends of History
03.03.2023
DMJ – Asphalt Tales and the Ends of History03.03.2023
This paper explores how asphalt became a medium for architects and artists from the late 1950s to the 1970s to raise and articulate questions about memory, oblivion, communication and the environment. It questions to what extent T.J. Demos’ recent assertion that experimental visual culture is embedded ‘within social engagements and… Read More
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk
01.03.2023
Geography of Hope: Hans Hollein and John Hejduk01.03.2023
This is the final of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. Extrusion: Hollein in the Southwest The Austrian architect Hans Hollein, for many years a leading figure in the international avant-garde, was a student at… Read More
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff
17.02.2023
Geography of Hope: Bruce Goff17.02.2023
This is the third of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. ‘Aparture’: Bruce Goff in the Parched Land ‘For the Panhandle, …1956 became the seventh straight year of drouth. Except for one savage blizzard, it… Read More
Emilio Ambasz’s ‘Italy, The New Domestic Landscape’ (1972)
09.02.2023
Emilio Ambasz’s ‘Italy, The New Domestic Landscape’ (1972)09.02.2023
– Editors
Late last year Emilio Ambasz offered us a fascinating text in which he reflects on ‘Italy, The New Domestic Landscape’, the seminal exhibition he curated in 1972 for MoMA. We have taken his text as an invitation to informally bring together drawings and objects related both to the exhibition and to the radical practices… Read More
W. R. Lethaby: Philip Webb and His Work
03.02.2023
W. R. Lethaby: Philip Webb and His Work03.02.2023
This is the fifth and final text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. Philip Webb was William Lethaby’s great hero; he considered his life and work the model for an architect. Webb was a generation older than Lethaby, and the two men most… Read More
Le Corbusier: The ‘Open hand’ as an expression of freedom?
02.02.2023
Le Corbusier: The ‘Open hand’ as an expression of freedom?02.02.2023
Le Corbusier placed particular emphasis on the notion of freedom. In Où en est l’architecture?, he declares: ‘I accept a poem only if it is made of “words in freedom”’. [1] In the same text, Le Corbusier describes his conception of art as ‘individual manifestation of freedom’. [2] In Sur… 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
– Adrian Dannatt
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
detail St Mary's Grove (series) DMC