Medium: drawing

DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling

DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling

Gabriel Hernández

The work of Team 4 Architects (1963–1967) and Norman and Wendy Foster’s continuation as Foster Associates (1967–1992) is typically examined through their built projects rather than through their extensive drawing repertoire and its imaginative potential. This article unpacks the narrative strategies employed by the two British practices, focusing on the… Read More

Protected: Drawings of Architectures

Protected: Drawings of Architectures

Primitivo González and Niall Hobhouse

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati at Drawing Matter

Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati at Drawing Matter

Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Francesco Fiammenghi

To probe the long and multifaceted career of Andrea Branzi (1938–2023), one must first turn to his formative years at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence in the early 1960s. At the time, the Florence School became the incubator of several of Italy’s postwar avant-garde groups, including… Read More

Protected: DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight

Protected: DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight

Willem de Bruijn

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Protected: The Architect of Impossible Physics

Protected: The Architect of Impossible Physics

Edward Bowen

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Reason for Drawings 

Reason for Drawings 

Samantha Hardingham

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a certain drawing did NOT exist? I am forever grateful to Cedric Price for doing this drawing. If he had not done it, my job of devising a way to order and organise materials for what became Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: a forward-minded retrospective (AA/CCA,… Read More

Drawing Al-Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp

Drawing Al-Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp

Mada Aldeeb

This drawing depicts, from above, the Al-Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in neighbouring Jordan, as of May 2013. Each square drawn is not a symbol: it is a tent. Drawing the camp by hand was important for many reasons: each line looks the way it is from years of individual layered knowledge, where one’s… Read More

Protected: The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards

Protected: The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards

Ana Abalos Ramos

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

John Hejduk: Means, Ends

John Hejduk: Means, Ends

Anton Bucich

Peter Eisenman was wrong… It is architecture, even if you can’t ‘get in it.’[1] But he was also right… ‘The tradition of the architect-writer is well precedented in the history of architecture.’[2] It might remain a question without an answer, though it is curious that on large, the once hyphenated… Read More

Protected: The Viennese School at Drawing Matter

Protected: The Viennese School at Drawing Matter

Iain Boyd Whyte

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

DMJ – The Field of Mars: The Mother of All Conspiracies

DMJ – The Field of Mars: The Mother of All Conspiracies

Adam Jasper

30 days hath September. All the rest, I can’t remember.      — Trad. To what extent can an object tell a story? The idea that things, particularly things of stone, might speak – or at least induce speech – is innate to our practice of raising memorials and preserving monuments. But… Read More

Building with Writing

Building with Writing

Stan Allen

Stan Allen’s exhibition Building with Writing, an installation documenting 40 years of writing and drawing practice, is currently presented at the Graham Foundation as part of the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial, led by Florencia Rodríguez, Artistic Director, and Igo Kommers Wender, Associate Curator.  The exhibition was curated by Michael Meredith, with… Read More

Protected: Zaha Hadid at Drawing Matter

Protected: Zaha Hadid at Drawing Matter

Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt

Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt

Matt Page

A drawing for?A drawing of?Before?After?An explanation?An idea?An instruction?Precise?Approximate?Careful?Loose?For the artist?For us?For sale? A seemingly quiet drawing raises many questions. Ulrich Rückriem splits, saws and breaks stone. It is a process that defies determination through drawing—or perhaps one that is itself drawing. How can an idea be drawn for a material… Read More

William Butterfield at Drawing Matter

William Butterfield at Drawing Matter

Nicholas Olsberg

William Butterfield was a British architect who trained first as a builder’s apprentice and then as an architect in offices at London and Worcester before opening his own London studio in 1838, continuing in full practice until 1886, and then on a limited scale through to 1897. He was the… Read More

Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City

Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City

John Pudney

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Vor-textu(r)al Translations from Building to Drawing

Vor-textu(r)al Translations from Building to Drawing

Renée Charron

Architecture emerges somewhere in the interval between the first mark of drawing and building; it is from this interstitial space that potential stirs, waiting to be swept up in bouts of differential combustion. In this sense, architecture is neither drawing nor building but something that exceeds both, while transforming their… Read More

Bernat Klein Studio

Bernat Klein Studio

Neil Gillespie

Travelling north through the Borders over the years, regardless of route, a diversion along a twisting country road north of Selkirk was always on the cards. Navigating a dangerous bend in the road, no time to stop, was rewarded by a fleeting glimpse of an enigmatic presence amongst the trees.… Read More

Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives

Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives

Marco Moro

The following text is a partially revised version of that delivered and published in ‘Stoà Open Seminar. Emerging perspectives on teaching and research in architectural design’ (May 2024). It has since become the conceptual framework for a series of seminars held on the same subject at the School of Architecture… Read More

Protected: Teatro del Mondo

Protected: Teatro del Mondo

Vincenzo Moschetti

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

In the Archive: Maristella Casciato

In the Archive: Maristella Casciato

Maristella Casciato

From April to July, Maristella Casciato was Drawing Matter’s Visiting Scholar—our first in London. During her time in the archive, she made new discoveries and started many stimulating conversations. Among other things, she closely studied Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Punjab Grille Capitol album, translated a selection of Gio Ponti’s illustrated letters,… Read More

Carlos Diniz: London 2025

Carlos Diniz: London 2025

Editors

‘As a piece of urban design [it] is simply abysmal. A wonderful opportunity to create a new place in London with innovative urban forms has been missed… The layout is simplistic and banal, the architecture lumpy and mediocre—the whole looks like a chunk of some ageing, tired and dreary US… Read More

Fabric Fabrications

Fabric Fabrications

Peter Wilson

Interpretation I am very grateful to Mark Dorrian for his reading of my 1977 drawing. [1] While at the time of its laborious production, the word shroud was not uppermost as my intended coding, I can now see that the dark, drawn folds have a real, symbolic or imaginary resonance—subsequently… Read More

A Machine is a House for Making a Living

A Machine is a House for Making a Living

Drawing Architecture Studio

‘Mobility’ has long been a theme in architecture. After observing everyday life in Chinese cities, we became interested in exploring an understanding of mobility, which is not primarily defined by motion, but by the practices of pausing and occupying urban space. The discovery comes from the vehicles used by street… Read More