Guide for Submissions
Drawing Matter has been publishing texts online since 2015. Currently, our website features over 1300 texts (with at least two added each week) and is visited by more than 1500 readers each day—these texts are also circulated to over 10,000 readers in our fortnightly newsletter and 45,000 followers on social media.
The Drawing Matter website is a fast-growing repository of new and historical writing on architectural drawing, and with a focus on the role of drawing in architectural thought and practice. We understand drawing in the broader sense of the term, as any artefact (photograph, text, collage, and model) that can be seen to have immediate agency in articulating an architectural idea.
Many of the texts we publish address material in the Drawing Matter Collection, while others examine drawings and objects archived elsewhere or made by practitioners working today. Texts by architects on their own work and formative encounters with drawing/s are a particular point of interest. We also welcome reflections and informal reviews of new books and exhibitions, and proposals for related sequences of articles—any individual article from a series of this kind needs to be conceived and read as a stand-alone contribution to the Drawing Matter site.
Our repository model allows us to publish texts of varied lengths and formats and with diverse subject matters, not bound by specific themes. Across all formats, we aim to publish engaging and thoughtful writings that can be read by students, researchers, design practitioners, and a wider audience interested in drawing and architecture. The following list includes samples of different approaches contributors have taken over the past ten years. It is not an exhaustive record, and the editors welcome suggestions for experimental and inventive approaches.
- Original texts
Shorter (c.500 words)
https://drawingmatter.org/schinkel-precisely-loose/
https://drawingmatter.org/for-ap-ar/
https://drawingmatter.org/aldo-van-eyck-diruit-aedificat-mutat-quadrata-rotundis/
https://drawingmatter.org/william-dickinsons-pocketbook/
Longer (maximum 2,500 words)
https://drawingmatter.org/watchful-solitude-john-hejduk-and-venice/
https://drawingmatter.org/masterplanning-the-university-of-london/
https://drawingmatter.org/follow-the-footprints/
https://drawingmatter.org/learning-from-the-tortoise/
- Excerpts
Reproductions and translations of already published texts.
https://drawingmatter.org/a-free-composition-of-bodies-the-harlanda-church/
https://drawingmatter.org/francesco-milizia-on-maderno-posi-and-jonson/
https://drawingmatter.org/the-utzons-go-to-stockholm/
https://drawingmatter.org/luigi-moretti-and-spazio-eclecticism-and-unity-of-language/
- Shorts
Brief commentaries led by visual material (a drawing or a series of drawings).
https://drawingmatter.org/peristoral-arquitectes-modulus-matrix/
https://drawingmatter.org/alexander-pope-et-sibi/
https://drawingmatter.org/e-w-godwin-and-the-mild-mild-west/
https://drawingmatter.org/dismantled-sketchbook/
Review and Editorial Process
If you are interested in contributing a text, please submit a proposal to editors@drawingmatter.org. The editorial team discusses and reviews every submission and aims to respond to the authors within a month. We enjoy working with the authors on the details of their text and their choice of drawings, and suggesting ways of presenting both on the website. Generally, we see it as the author’s responsibility to clear copyright for images used in accepted texts.
