Category: project & building histories
Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral in Brasília
30.11.2022
Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral in Brasília30.11.2022
For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More
The Work of Ernest and Esther Born: Models for the City House
18.11.2022
The Work of Ernest and Esther Born: Models for the City House18.11.2022
Ernest and Esther Born trained as architects at Berkeley in the early 1920s and worked with great distinction in all aspects of architecture and the allied arts, from graphics and illustration to display design and architectural photography. This project marks one of their first endeavours on returning to San Francisco… Read More
Queensway, Hong Kong
04.11.2022
Queensway, Hong Kong04.11.2022
What I knew of Hong Kong before I moved here came from film and photography. It was a dense, post-modern city that in earlier decades had been characterised by its economic success. Since the turn of the century, the city has been pummelled by shocks and anxieties. Life in Hong… Read More
Heinz Isler Model
02.11.2022
Heinz Isler Model02.11.2022
– John Chilton and Paul Shepherd
This text was written by Paul Shepherd. The interjections, in italic, are additions by his friend and Heinz Isler expert John Chilton. If you go down to the woods today… Since our son was away on Scout camp all weekend, my plans for Sunday involved a much-needed lie-in and an… Read More
Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients
26.10.2022
Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients26.10.2022
In October 1925 Le Corbusier wrote to his client Madame Meyer a remarkable letter about his proposal with Pierre Jeanneret for her villa. It combined drawings with a highly scripted text that carefully guided her through each space, from the entrance to the roof garden. Like the pioneers of early… Read More
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)
07.09.2022
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)07.09.2022
The essay by Robert Maxwell linked below was sent to Drawing Matter by Celia Scott earlier this year. It was first published in Architectural Design, March 1977, as part of a longer feature titled ‘The Role of Ideology’, which discussed the theme through the writing of the architect and historian… Read More
Lenin’s Tomb, the Second Version
05.09.2022
Lenin’s Tomb, the Second Version05.09.2022
– Niall Hobhouse and Markus Lähteenmäki
The following email exchange took place between Niall Hobhouse, founder of Drawing Matter, and Markus Lähteenmäki in July 2022. Dear Markus, Came across these here in the archive… from god knows where exactly. Thought you might have something to say – had forgotten that it was originally ‘dummied’ in wood.… Read More
Mies van der Rohe and the Universal Space Project
30.08.2022
Mies van der Rohe and the Universal Space Project30.08.2022
I must say that I was far more riveted by another Mies . . . who, in perfect International Style manner continued to insist on architecture and the production of truth as generated by a set of a priori and universalizing laws, and who was caught up in the entirely… Read More
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin
17.08.2022
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin17.08.2022
This is an extract of the construction drawings produced by John M. Johansen’s office in 1963 for the cylindrical US Embassy in Dublin. It is a three-dimensional ink drawing of the external precast concrete structure, describing two single-storey bays in isolation. Viewed abstractly it could almost be an anatomical study,… Read More
Power & Public Space 9: Ana Bonet Miró – Fun Palace
03.08.2022
Power & Public Space 9: Ana Bonet Miró – Fun Palace03.08.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Ana Bonet Miró
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Since its conception in the 1960s, the Fun Palace has circulated widely in architecture culture, and mainly through its provocative collages, characterised… Read More
Power & Public Space 8: Markus LäHteenmäki – Lev Rudnev’s Monument to the Victims of the Revolution
29.07.2022
Power & Public Space 8: Markus LäHteenmäki – Lev Rudnev’s Monument to the Victims of the Revolution29.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Markus Lähteenmäki
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Markus Lähteenmäki’s research explores, in part, how architecture became instrumental in the societal and cultural transformations that took place in revolutionary Russia. … Read More
Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia
27.07.2022
Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia27.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Mabel O. Wilson
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: In 2020 The Memorial to Enslaved Labourers opened at the University of Virginia, designed as a collaboration between Höweler+Yoon Architecture, Mabel O.… Read More
Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)
22.07.2022
Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)22.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and André Patrão
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Parc de la Villette was emblematic of the strong ties made between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy in the 1980s, where… Read More
Power & Public Space 5: Mark Wallinger – State Britain
20.07.2022
Power & Public Space 5: Mark Wallinger – State Britain20.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Mark Wallinger
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Much of Mark Wallinger’s art exists in public space. He’s made films and performance pieces set in tube stations and airports, and… Read More
Power & Public Space 4: Jonas Žukauskas – Forest Parts
15.07.2022
Power & Public Space 4: Jonas Žukauskas – Forest Parts15.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Jonas Žukauskas
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: When we think about public space, we tend to consider the street, the plaza, the park or the square – urban spaces… Read More
Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue
13.07.2022
Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue13.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Manuel Herz
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Last year the Swiss practice Manuel Herz Architects completed a wooden synagogue West of Kyiv at Babyn Yar, the site of one… Read More
Power & Public Space 2: Lauren Bon – Bending the River Back to the City
08.07.2022
Power & Public Space 2: Lauren Bon – Bending the River Back to the City08.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Lauren Bon
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: The concrete-lined LA River was built on top of a sprawling floodplain, which the land artist Lauren Bon seeks to reveal through… Read More
Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden
06.07.2022
Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden06.07.2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Liza Fior
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: The Dalston Eastern Curve garden began as a meanwhile scheme, but over the past decade has embedded itself at the centre of… Read More
Jan Tschichold and El Lissitzky: Foto-Auge (Photo-eye)
29.06.2022
Jan Tschichold and El Lissitzky: Foto-Auge (Photo-eye)29.06.2022
Although not a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (DWB), Jan Tschichold was appointed to the selection committee for the Werkbund’s Film und Foto exhibition (FiFo), to be held in Stuttgart between May and June 1929. FiFo was one of the most ambitious attempts to showcase recent developments in photography. The… Read More
Workshop: On Siza’s March ’77 Sketchbook
22.06.2022
Workshop: On Siza’s March ’77 Sketchbook22.06.2022
This audio recording documents a workshop on Álvaro Siza’s Malagueira sketchbook delivered by Manuel Montenegro to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The sketchbook is a record of Siza’s thoughts and responses over three days in 1977, on… Read More
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House
10.06.2022
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House10.06.2022
A recent acquisition of six drawings by the American architect Benjamin Wistar Morris reveals his long involvement with one of the most important urban projects of the twentieth century. Morris’s role in this project was a highlight of his career although he has not been widely associated with it. A… Read More
Joan Littlewood’s Memos to Cedric Price
21.11.2022
Joan Littlewood’s Memos to Cedric Price21.11.2022
– Ana Bonet Miró
In this text, Ana Bonet Miró reflects on the memos written by Joan Littlewood addressed to her company of actors, and to Cedric Price during their collaboration on the Fun Palace project. For more on Littlewood and Price’s collaboration, listen to Ana Bonet Miró and Matthew Blunderfield in conversation for… Read More
theatre correspondence letters ephemera