Medium: digital
On Authority
26.05.2023
On Authority26.05.2023
Following our recent series with fala we decided to approach some other practices who have themselves developed their design process through particular drawing ‘types’, challenging our expectation of the usage and forms traditionally associated with drawing in an architecture studio. We are very grateful to fala for introducing us to Nuno Melo Sousa… Read More
The Sasada Lab
16.01.2023
The Sasada Lab16.01.2023
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 City of Design
09.01.2023
The City of Design09.01.2023
Italy has remained a federation of city-states. There are museum cities and factory cities. There is a city whose streets are made of water and another where all streets are hollowed walls. There is a city where all its inhabitants work on the manufacture of equipment for amusement parks, a… 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
fala: renders
28.10.2022
fala: renders28.10.2022
– fala
This is the fourth of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Low-resolution images are humble and straightforward. The textures are blunt and the colours are strong. Ambient occlusion is mostly off. Light, shadows and reflections are rarely under… Read More
How Big is Big – Does Scale Matter? A Reflection on Scale in Architecture and Drawing
21.10.2022
How Big is Big – Does Scale Matter? A Reflection on Scale in Architecture and Drawing21.10.2022
– Federica Goffi and Devon Moar
The bee drawing(s) by Devon Moar illustrate that changes in scale imply a passage of time. One drawing here becomes many drawings, each marking a different moment of discovery unfolding a process. One could say that when it comes to architectural media, there are two types of scales dealing with… Read More
fala: wireframes
17.10.2022
fala: wireframes17.10.2022
– fala
This is the third of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Wireframes are snapshots of three-dimensional models built solely from lines. Single-line plans and sections are extruded to form a light envelope. Its colours dismantle the… 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
Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller
11.07.2022
Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller11.07.2022
We recently arranged for Elia Zenghelis to give a presentation under the title ‘The Image as Emblem and Storyteller’ via the Architecture Foundation’s YouTube channel. The talk summarises a thesis that Elia has been continuously developing throughout his career: from OMA’s polemical early work, via decades as one of the… 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
The Evolving Role of Drawing
29.04.2022
The Evolving Role of Drawing29.04.2022
This text was first published in The Architectural Review in 2013. Carlo Scarpa, in a famously infamous gesture, opened all his courses in design at the University of Venice by demonstrating the art of sharpening a pencil. That was the precise point, he claimed, from which all architecture proceeds. And… Read More
Drawing Out, Drawing In: Cartographies for ‘Out of the Sea’
24.03.2022
Drawing Out, Drawing In: Cartographies for ‘Out of the Sea’24.03.2022
The provocation for this essay is Drawing Matter’s own: ‘we take the word “drawing” to be as much a verb as a noun…’ Drawing describes an act and a thing: both a process and the outcome of that process. There aren’t many English words like it, and many of them… Read More
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, Student Housing, Chieti
07.02.2022
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, Student Housing, Chieti07.02.2022
– Kersten Geers, Stefano Graziani and Jelena Pancevac
The 1976 competition for student housing was part of a development scheme for the recently founded D’Annunzio University, a joint initiative by the neighbouring provinces of Chieti and Pescara in the Abruzzo region of southern Italy. The town of Chieti is located 200km northeast of Rome, on the ancient main… Read More
Pan Scoll Zoom 19: Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici
19.01.2022
Pan Scoll Zoom 19: Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici19.01.2022
– Pier Vittorio Aureli, Fabrizio Gallanti and Maria S. Giudici
This is the nineteenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode, he talks to Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici. Pan Scroll Zoom: Teaching… Read More
Decoding Wittgenstein’s Stonborough Villa
18.01.2022
Decoding Wittgenstein’s Stonborough Villa18.01.2022
God does not reveal himself in the world. The facts all belong only to the task and not to its performance. — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] In the 1980s, the beginning of widespread personal computing, we didn’t buy readymade software like today. Every night found me frantically writing a thousand lines… Read More
Essex Coastal Cornice: Ex-Mould
11.01.2022
Essex Coastal Cornice: Ex-Mould11.01.2022
The cover of early editions of John Summerson’s book The Classical Language of Architecture features a curious drawing of a Doric entablature. To all intents and purposes the profile of the entablature is correct, but it has been extruded through the method of oblique projection. It is as if we… Read More
El Croquis 208: DOGMA familiar/unfamiliar 2002–2021 (2021): Review
29.11.2021
El Croquis 208: DOGMA familiar/unfamiliar 2002–2021 (2021): Review29.11.2021
As one of the most prominent architecture publications in the world, El Croquis has long been a prestige showcase for the upper echelon of architectural practices. Its publication format, with each issue typically devoted to a specific practice, lends El Croquis more the air of an exclusive monograph series than… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 18: Wolff Architects
17.11.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 18: Wolff Architects17.11.2021
– Fabrizio Gallanti, Ilze Wolff and Heinrich Wolff
This is the eighteenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode, Heinrich Wolff and Ilze Wolff of Wolff Architects discuss the production of their drawings,… Read More
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona
16.11.2021
The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona16.11.2021
– 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
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority
26.05.2023
Nuno Melo Sousa: authority26.05.2023
– Nuno Melo Sousa
This text is a part of a series of reflections by Nuno Melo Sousa on his drawing practices. Click here for the series introduction. there is no authority.there is no gravity.there is no fee.there is no programme.there is no agenda.there is no time.there is no client.there is no plot. Creatures.… Read More