Medium: drawing
Drawing Sacred Forests and Courtyards in South Benin
20 January 2021
Drawing Sacred Forests and Courtyards in South Benin20 January 2021
The following conversation between the editors of Accattone and Quentin Nicolaï was first published in Accattone 6 (2019). It documents research carried out by Nicolaï in Abomey, Benin, between January 2014 and June 2018. Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the magazine’s editors for allowing us reproduce the… Read More
Zahalternative Histories: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid
19 January 2021
Zahalternative Histories: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid19 January 2021
By John Tuomey
From a sheet of sketches by Zaha Hadid to rock formations at Ines Meáin and St Brigid’s Well, in this short film John Tuomey explains the thinking behind O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Alternative Histories model. This commentary is the first in a series organised by the Irish Architectural Archive. The series,… Read More
Aldo Rossi: Divination of a Drawing
18 January 2021
Aldo Rossi: Divination of a Drawing18 January 2021
‘With the instinct of a water-diviner, he begins to search, and that which is inside… begins to simmer to the surface.’ – Giorgio De Chirico This is a short meditation on an enigmatic drawing by Aldo Rossi. The drawing is framed as a stacked layering of three architectural elements whose… Read More
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s Architecture of Abstraction
15 January 2021
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s Architecture of Abstraction15 January 2021
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s The Marriage of Reason and Squalor series may rightly be called barbaric. ‘Barbarism? Yes indeed,’ writes Walter Benjamin in his 1933 essay, Experience and Poverty. ‘We say this in order to introduce a new positive concept of barbarism. For what does poverty of experience do for the… Read More
Architecture at the Edge
13 January 2021
Architecture at the Edge13 January 2021
By Marco Moro and Craig Moller
The following is a conversation between Marco Moro and Craig Moller, New Zealand-born architect and author of the drawing pictured above. Moller made the drawing while in a design studio taught by Mark Wigley in 1985, while the latter was about to finish his doctoral thesis within the newly established… Read More
The Discreet Charm of the Bureaucratic
13 January 2021
The Discreet Charm of the Bureaucratic13 January 2021
When Henry-Russell Hitchcock drew a crooked line between the architecture of genius and the architecture of bureaucracy in a famous essay of 1947, he could hardly have predicted that within two decades, neo-avant-gardists around the world would embrace bureaucratic architecture because of its liberatory capacities—precisely the opposite reading of what… Read More
Thomas Chippendale and Ornament
13 January 2021
Thomas Chippendale and Ornament13 January 2021
By Tom Cookson
‘[Ornament] omitted at pleasure,’ wrote Thomas Chippendale in a guide to his revolutionary The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, the first furniture pattern book of its kind. Although initially considered an advertising tool, it quickly became an invaluable manual for craftsmen, with its clear dimensions and rigorously proportioned pieces open… Read More
Light Adaptation
8 January 2021
Light Adaptation8 January 2021
By Chase Galis
Techniques of architectural drawing have been developed according to the physics of light and our perception of its effects. From the origins of two-dimensional representation – often mythologized in the act of tracing a projected silhouette on a flat surface – to practices of atmospheric simulation in rendering, recognized patterns of light have become essential in the communication of architecture’s spatial… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Architectural Apparitions
7 January 2021
Writing Prize 2020: Architectural Apparitions7 January 2021
Some dreams are never meant to see the light of day. Like a wild design that continually finds itself at the bottom of the roster, patiently waiting its turn to be a part of the city’s skyline, it either promises to burn a hole in the pocket of the investor,… Read More
Malagueria: Conflict Resolution (1983)
4 January 2021
Malagueria: Conflict Resolution (1983)4 January 2021
By Álvaro Siza
From my experience at Évora, I believe that participation – neither mystifying nor mystified – implies numerous and inevitable conflicts, conflicts which come out of the project. The general concept for the Malagueira district, the methods, the project itself, have indeed given rise to contradictory commentaries, even before our intervention:… Read More
Ruins in Reverse
22 January 2021
Ruins in Reverse22 January 2021
By Thomas Gould
In 1844, architect Eugéne Viollet-le-Duc won a competition to supervise the restoration of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Blasted and defaced during the Revolution, the condition of the great church testified less to the promises of an infant republic than to the bloody throes of its birth. For its restoration, the Comité des… Read More
theoretical & imaginary drawing matter writing prize 2020