Medium: drawing
Photographing Drawings
27.01.2026
Photographing Drawings27.01.2026
At Drawing Matter, we have a rule that when a new object enters the collection, it must be photographed and published within a month. With our capable photographer and her fancy equipment still in Somerset, we needed to find other ways of documenting new additions to the collection. We tried… Read More
Heinrich Kulka and Adolf Loos
23.01.2026
Heinrich Kulka and Adolf Loos23.01.2026
On 7th July 2025, an exhibition dedicated to architect Heinrich Kulka opened at the Ringturm Exhibition Centre in Vienna, titled Heinrich Kulka (1900–1971) – The Spatial Plan as a Design Method, focusing on Kulka’s European work, both with Adolf Loos and as an independent architect. It was curated by architect and writer… Read More
Arrows
19.01.2026
Arrows19.01.2026
The small drawing that adorns the title page of F. R. S. Yorke’s 1937 study, The Modern House in England, is typical for its time. It shows an aerial perspective, made in thin black lines, of a conventional modern house with all its attributes. Cubic in shape, the house is… Read More
Protected: On Cedric Price
15.01.2026
Protected: On Cedric Price15.01.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Drawing Research Platform, London, 2025, ENAC Summer Workshop
15.01.2026
Drawing Research Platform, London, 2025, ENAC Summer Workshop15.01.2026
– Raffael Baur, Patricia Guaita and Matthew Wells
For a fourth year, Drawing Matter hosted students from ENAC EPFL for a week-long workshop on survey drawings—this time not in a Somerset farmyard, but in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 400 yards east of the archive. The workshop was organised by Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur in collaboration with Drawing Matter,… Read More
On Measurement: A Survey of Florence
12.01.2026
On Measurement: A Survey of Florence12.01.2026
The following text is an extract from a longer essay entitled ‘De re mensura: Surveying Practice in Quattrocento Painting’—which the author completed at the Warburg Institute in the autumn of 2025—looking at Renaissance perspective painting to consider how practices of surveying informed the development of perspective as an artistic and intellectual pursuit. *… Read More
Summer Evenings on Sukhna Dam
08.01.2026
Summer Evenings on Sukhna Dam08.01.2026
Poornmashi. The bright full-moon nights of the year were always opportunities for us to try to convince our parents to organise a picnic at the Lake. Chandigarh is a long way from the ocean, way inland, surrounded by the vast Indo-Gangetic plains. And although the mighty Himalayas are right at… Read More
Protected: Het woonpalazzo (The Residential Palazzo)
07.01.2026
Protected: Het woonpalazzo (The Residential Palazzo)07.01.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Tracing Shadows: A Workshop Primer
05.01.2026
Tracing Shadows: A Workshop Primer05.01.2026
Here, Mark Dorrian examines the theoretical history of the shadow and its evolving role in architectural drawing. The text acts as a word-and-image primer for the third colloquium event, jointly hosted by the RIBA and V&A Drawings Collections, and Drawing Matter, which will take place later this month—a day of… Read More
In the Archive: Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Daniel Talesnik
18.12.2025
In the Archive: Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Daniel Talesnik18.12.2025
– Kenneth Frampton and Daniel Talesnik
In this instalment of our ‘In the Archive’ series, eminent architectural historian Kenneth Frampton is joined by architect and curator Daniel Talesnik. Through drawings of built and unbuilt works by Ove Arup, Stirling & Gowan, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Patrick Hodgkinson, to name a few, the conversation ranges from… Read More
DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight
18.12.2025
DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight18.12.2025
Architectural stories, almost by definition, construct narratives combining image and text. It is these combinations of the visual and the verbal that make architectural stories particularly compelling and memorable. ‘The Story of the Pool’ (1976) by Rem Koolhaas is a case in point. The script, written by Koolhaas, tells of… Read More
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
This is Tomorrow
02.12.2025
This is Tomorrow 02.12.2025
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
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
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: The house stands still while life moves
27.01.2026
Protected: The house stands still while life moves27.01.2026
– Alessandro Mendini
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
presentation theoretical & imaginary DMC plan elevation