Category: project & building histories
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona
16 November 2021
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona16 November 2021
– Kersten Geers, Stefano Graziani and Jelena Pancevac
This is part one of two excerpts chosen from The Urban Fact: A Reference Book on Aldo Rossi. The second text, on Aldo Rossi’s Student Housing in Chieti, completed in 1976, will be available soon. Please see the end of the page for more information on this publication. The Olona… Read More
A Short History of Alberto Ponis on the Sardinian Coast
15 November 2021
A Short History of Alberto Ponis on the Sardinian Coast15 November 2021
Alberto Ponis was born in Genoa in 1933. He took his architecture degree in Florence in 1960. His father, Mario Alberto, had founded the M.I.T.A. (Manifattura Italiana Tappeti Artistici) in 1926 in Nervi, near Genoa. The company’s building was built by Luigi Daneri in 1940. Gio Ponti, Arnaldo Pomodoro and… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright, House for Edith Carlson, 1939, Part II
7 November 2021
Frank Lloyd Wright, House for Edith Carlson, 1939, Part II7 November 2021
Extracted from Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter by Philippa Lewis, published by MIT Press © 2021. Order the book here. The drawings around which Stories from Architecture are written are all part of the Drawing Matter collection. Some of the texts were first published as ‘Behind the Lines’. My dear Miss Carlson, By… Read More
Writing Prize 2021: Itsuko Hasegawa, Capturing an Infinite Distance
4 November 2021
Writing Prize 2021: Itsuko Hasegawa, Capturing an Infinite Distance4 November 2021
Negatives Of the 120,027 items included in the archives of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, 16,010 are part of the collection called ‘Architecture’, and 22,877 are filed as ‘Negative film’. Astonishingly, only one entry sits in both: ‘Ensemble de 12 négatifs couleur (4 pour le projet Bizan, 6 pour le… Read More
The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh
27 October 2021
The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh27 October 2021
Anthony Salvin (1799–1881) was a noted English architect of country houses and a pioneer restorer of historic monuments. In the latter sphere, he undertook significant interventions at Windsor and Alnwick Castles and at the Tower of London. For example, he is largely responsible for the way we see the yards… Read More
Alberto Ponis on Casa Scalesciani
27 October 2021
Alberto Ponis on Casa Scalesciani27 October 2021
The site chosen by Juan S., an Argentinian with a penchant for Italy, was almost alarmingly steep and sheer above the sea. Even the path leading to it was perilous, and trodden with bated breath. During our long conversations about where the house would be built, we were not so… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright, House for Edith Carlson, 1939, Part I
21 October 2021
Frank Lloyd Wright, House for Edith Carlson, 1939, Part I21 October 2021
This is part one of the true story of librarian Edith Carlson, who in 1938 commissioned a house from Frank Lloyd Wright. The letters that document the project are now in the Drawing Matter collection. Extracted from Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter by Philippa Lewis, published by MIT Press… Read More
The Metropolitan Opera House, NYC: Invisible guests
15 October 2021
The Metropolitan Opera House, NYC: Invisible guests15 October 2021
The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.– Czesław Miłosz, from Ars Poetica? My father, Tad Leski, was an architect and designer for Wallace… Read More
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum
4 October 2021
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum4 October 2021
There is a handwritten phrase in red ink at the bottom of this sketch, which reads in Italian: ‘for the continuous monument (genesis)’. This drawing is from one of Adolfo Natalini’s sketchbooks and depicts a series of studies about the earth. In the same sketchbook, he drew multiple sequences of… Read More
Christoph Schlingensiefs Operndorf Afrika (2020): Review
27 September 2021
Christoph Schlingensiefs Operndorf Afrika (2020): Review27 September 2021
The Opera Village is a complex located thirty kilometres from the capital of Burkina Faso that was initiated by the late German film, theatre, and opera director, author, and action artist, Christoph Schlingensief and envisioned as a site centring African artists and enabling cross-cultural creative exchange. The ever-expanding project combines… Read More
Survey: Le Corbusier, Roland Garros stadium
21 September 2021
Survey: Le Corbusier, Roland Garros stadium21 September 2021
In July 1958, one day before Faisal II was assassinated during the 14 July Revolution in Baghdad, the Iraqi Ministry of Development sent a telegram to Paris confirming Le Corbusier’s appointment to design the Olympic Stadium. Over the following months, while the programme and site were being clarified, his office… Read More
Clancy Moore Architects: Atcost
20 September 2021
Clancy Moore Architects: Atcost20 September 2021
– Andrew Clancy and Colm Moore
The Atcost project makes space for storage, education and performance, enabling a diverse range of activities to enhance the growing programme of Drawing Matter: summer schools, events, and away days for universities and practices. After noticing that the vast majority of these activities take place in summer, we proposed an… Read More
Cosmos Street Revisited
31 August 2021
Cosmos Street Revisited31 August 2021
This response relates to a text by Oscar Binder and Nicholas Podlanha published by Drawing Matter in July 2021, which described and reconstructed (badly) a lost project by the deceased architect James Clark. In fact I am James Clark (decidedly not dead) and the project parodied in this less than… Read More
The Silo at 40Hz
27 August 2021
The Silo at 40Hz27 August 2021
– Joe Banks and Jonah Ginsburg
DISINFORMATION, CLOSED CIRCUIT, 2021Video documentation recorded on August 1, 2021 – the last day of the installation. Headphones recommended. ‘Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality and [of] engendering dreams’, and, perhaps paradoxically, in the silo at Shatwell, a familiar architectural form is re-purposed… Read More
The H-plan: Breuer, Stirling, Gowan
5 August 2021
The H-plan: Breuer, Stirling, Gowan5 August 2021
The interesting note by Neil Jackson tying Gowan and his Isle of Wight House to the bi-nuclear plans of Breuer and then to Craig Ellwood’s Hillsborough House, reminds me of Stirling’s own early interest in Breuer, whose Connecticut work he saw during his 1948 internship in New York during his… Read More
Building the Gowan Shed
30 July 2021
Building the Gowan Shed30 July 2021
Through the week of July 12–17, thirteen young architects camped at Shatwell Farm in order to realise a shed from an enigmatic early drawing by James Gowan. The workshop was initiated and led by Maria-Chiara Piccinelli of PiM.studio and Corinna Dean of ARCA. This film portrays the (re)design and construction… Read More
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House
28 July 2021
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House28 July 2021
The editors were thrilled to receive this response from Neil Jackson to our publication of drawings and literature relating to Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight house. We are always interested in receiving comments and feedback from our readers: editors@drawingmatter.org. In taking the plan of the Stirling & Gowan’s Isle… Read More
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House
21 July 2021
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House21 July 2021
– James Gowan, J. M. Richards, Laurent Stalder, James Stirling and Ellis Woodman
This first impetus for this article was provided by Laurent Stalder’s discussion of the sectional perspective drawing for the Isle of Wight house, reproduced here, which led us to J. M. Richards’ seminal essay, and then onward through the literature. In addition, we asked the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Canadian… Read More
Leicester Engineering Building: Completed!
14 July 2021
Leicester Engineering Building: Completed!14 July 2021
In this pendant piece to Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction, follow James Gowan, once again, as the photographer of his own architecture. The text below is transcribed from an annotated typescript titled ‘Aspects of Humanism’, July 1989, archived at Drawing Matter. The text was published in Architecture Today as ‘Anatomy… Read More
36 Elevations
12 July 2021
36 Elevations12 July 2021
I began this series of drawings with something else in mind. The first picture was to be drawn freehand, but I took a wrong turn straight away by setting up a structure using a set-square around which the composition would be based. I realised that the structure was already a… Read More
Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction
8 July 2021
Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction8 July 2021
Follow James Gowan, through his own photographs, as he inspects the construction progress of the Leicester Engineering Building. While these photographs may have been taken for immediate use at the time, they now serve as a permanent record of the temporary and internal structures that were later disassembled or concealed.… Read More
Shatwell Farm: A Step Up
6 July 2021
Shatwell Farm: A Step Up6 July 2021
Imagined as something in between a small building or piece of furniture and a block for mounting a horse, these steps are a shortcut to an out-of-sight sauna that sits above a slope amongst the trees. They are directly visible when leaving the dairy house, sitting to one side of… Read More
Álvaro Siza: Seven Early Sketchbooks
22 November 2021
Álvaro Siza: Seven Early Sketchbooks22 November 2021
– Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Álvaro Siza
These films were made over four hours on the afternoon of Sunday 25 March 2018 in Álvaro Siza’s studio in Rua do Aleixo outside Porto. I had flown to Portugal that morning with the seven sketchbooks which we were to look through with Manuel Montenegro. Manuel and I had conceived… Read More
sketch furniture & object design housing public space DMC