Medium: drawing
Collection Guide: Zaha Hadid
15.12.2025
Collection Guide: Zaha Hadid15.12.2025
– Editors
Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. After studying mathematics at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, from 1968 to 1971, she moved to London in 1972, where she studied architecture at the Architectural Association (AA). It was here that her work began to reference the Russian avant-garde,… Read More
To Table
11.12.2025
To Table11.12.2025
To table is to create the conditions for collective presence through food, space, event, and ritual; it is to host a gathering where practices and events—ranging from the everyday to the ceremonial, the spontaneous to the planned—become acts of social meaning-making. Also, as a verb, ‘to table’ conventionally carries a dual… Read More
The Lovell Health House: Richard Neutra’s Revolution in Building
04.12.2025
The Lovell Health House: Richard Neutra’s Revolution in Building 04.12.2025
‘Paris, 1927. I was in Lurçat’s studio on the rue Bonaparte looking for the first time at reproductions of the ‘Health House’ of Neutra. We young followers of the new architecture were both admiring and astounded by this signal of a revolution in building.’ Willy Boesiger, introducing Richard Neutra. Buildings and Projects (Zurich:… Read More
The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards
01.12.2025
The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards01.12.2025
Drawing Matter is pleased to publish the following text to mark the opening of ‘Come Deck the Halls!’, an exhibition celebrating the work of Alison and Peter Smithson at Roca London Gallery (5 December 2025 – 31 January 2026). The exhibition provides an insight into their architectural thinking through the… Read More
Protected: Summer Evenings on Sukhna Dam
28.11.2025
Protected: Summer Evenings on Sukhna Dam28.11.2025
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Drawing as Method and Process
28.11.2025
Drawing as Method and Process28.11.2025
Modus is a preparatory school for studies in architecture, art, and design, as well as a sustained investigation into the potentialities of drawing. Here, drawing is used to pose questions, uncover spatial and formal possibilities, and articulate new architectural statements. The school is founded on the belief that while architecture… Read More
Tony Fretton: Everything I Saw Became Important (Exhibition + Talk)
24.11.2025
Tony Fretton: Everything I Saw Became Important (Exhibition + Talk)24.11.2025
– Editors
On Friday 7 November, Drawing Matter welcomed architects Tony Fretton and Benjamin Machin to the archive for a conversation to open the exhibition ‘Tony Fretton: Everything I Saw Became Important’. Anchored by seven ‘artefacts’ now in the Drawing Matter Collection, the conversation explores the roles of drawings, photography, and sketchbooks… Read More
Collection Guide: The Viennese School
18.11.2025
Collection Guide: The Viennese School18.11.2025
Drawing Matter’s collection of Viennese drawings from the 19th and early 20th century includes works by Franz Jakob Kreuter, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Schönthal, Emil Hoppe, and Friedrich Ohmann, among others. It was a time of great technological advance, social upheaval, cultural revolt, and changing attitudes to design. Considered as a group, the… Read More
Drawings of Architectures
13.11.2025
Drawings of Architectures13.11.2025
– Primitivo González and Niall Hobhouse
The exhibition Drawings of Architectures brings together Primitivo González’s private collection of original architectural drawings, sketches and notes, which González has been collecting for more than twenty-five years. The exhibition, designed by Ara, Noa and Primitivo González, includes drawings from Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Rafael Moneo, and Emilio Tuñón, among others, and is presented at the Patio Herreriano Museum in… Read More
Sin Centre: Sheen and Transparent Overlays
10.11.2025
Sin Centre: Sheen and Transparent Overlays10.11.2025
– Nat Chard and Michael Webb
Following a lively debate at Drawing Matter about the surface and support of Michael Webb’s isometric drawing of a car ramp, Nat Chard thought to ask Michael himself how he made it. Dear all, On Monday we had a conversation about one of Mike Webb’s Sin Centre drawings that had a print-like… Read More
The Architect of Impossible Physics
06.11.2025
The Architect of Impossible Physics06.11.2025
More than once, when describing the processes involved in creating these drawings, my listener has responded with two words in particular: loading and channelling. I thought I would and should elaborate. The initial first gestures, lines, squiggles, scratches, smudges and randomisations of the mark making inform the start to the work in these… Read More
Protected: Photographing Drawings
03.11.2025
Protected: Photographing Drawings03.11.2025
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
In Palau, Sardinia, on the East Coast
03.11.2025
In Palau, Sardinia, on the East Coast03.11.2025
Anyone who has seen and contemplated certain beautiful and simple ancient Mediterranean houses, such as those found in Greece, Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, knows that modern examples rarely possess the wisdom and beauty of these anonymous, traditional dwellings. Wisdom, above all: the thickness of the walls, for coolness and… Read More
DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling
30.10.2025
DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling30.10.2025
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
Collection Guide: Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati
27.10.2025
Collection Guide: Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati27.10.2025
– 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
Reason for Drawings
20.10.2025
Reason for Drawings 20.10.2025
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
16.10.2025
Drawing Al-Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp16.10.2025
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
John Hejduk: Means, Ends
09.10.2025
John Hejduk: Means, Ends09.10.2025
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
DMJ – The Field of Mars: The Mother of All Conspiracies
06.10.2025
DMJ – The Field of Mars: The Mother of All Conspiracies06.10.2025
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
02.10.2025
Building with Writing02.10.2025
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
Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt
29.09.2025
Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt29.09.2025
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
Collection Guide: William Butterfield
25.09.2025
Collection Guide: William Butterfield25.09.2025
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
This is Tomorrow
02.12.2025
This is Tomorrow 02.12.2025
– Tess McCann
The following text is excerpted from the catalogue of the exhibition Theo Crosby: One Hundred Lives, which is on view at Osh Gallery London until the 11th December 2025. Curated by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and researcher Tess McCann, the exhibition focuses on the life and work of Theo Crosby, one of the founding… Read More
sketch exhibition design presentation theoretical & imaginary exhibition