Medium: drawing

Hardman & Co.

Hardman & Co.

Sarah James

My interest in seeing the Hardman & Co. drawings at Drawing Matter was quite personally motivated as I feel a connection to the company. Partially, because I come from Birmingham where the company was based, and because I visited the studios informally in the 1980s with my parents. I was… Read More

‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church

‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church

Peter Celsing

Peter Celsing won the competition to design the Härlanda Church, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1952, and the church was completed seven years later in 1959. The design of the project is a fragmented list of reflections by the architect in the account reproduced below—which was first drafted on receipts from the… Read More

Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers

Nuno Melo Sousa: on big papers

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. First, there were a couple of tense drawings.One, two, three. At the very third second, it quickly escalated to a nonstop dry pastel scratch on A2… Read More

On Authority

On Authority

Nuno Melo Sousa

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

Protected: John Hejduk’s Bye House: An Object in the Landscape

Protected: John Hejduk’s Bye House: An Object in the Landscape

Stan Allen and Marina Correia

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Architectural manuals and Pacific speculations

Architectural manuals and Pacific speculations

Sarah Treadwell

Lodged in an architectural archive at the bottom of the world, [1] Joshua Kirby’s 1755 book, Perspective of Architecture: a work entirely new […] announces that ‘All those lines that are boundaries to the several parts of Architecture, are either straight or circular; and therefore, those two different kinds of… Read More

Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architektur’

Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architektur’

Iain Boyd Whyte

This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. In January 1917, the architect Bruno… Read More

Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh

This audio recording documents a workshop on architects’ drawings exploring the relationship between form, space and programme. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live… Read More

Accademia Bridge Proposals: Venice Biennale 1985

Accademia Bridge Proposals: Venice Biennale 1985

Editors

This project scrapbook was prompted by Drawing Matter’s recent acquisition of drawings by Peter Wilson and Luc Deleu, made in response to Aldo Rossi’s ‘Progetto Venezia’ brief for the 1985 Venice Biennale, which invited proposals for a new Accademia Bridge to replace the wooden one constructed in the 1930s. Wilson… Read More

Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia

Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia

Adrian Hawker

In the years prior to the commencement of his major built works, Bridgebuilding No.4 Ponte dell’Accademia holds a critical position within the formative projects of the architect Peter Wilson. The design was prepared in response to an open international architecture competition that was launched under Aldo Rossi’s directorship of the… Read More

T.O.P. Office and the Accademia Bridge

T.O.P. Office and the Accademia Bridge

Luc Deleu

In a way, this project was architecturally ‘ready-made’. Our proposal for the Accademia Bridge can best be seen as an example of recycling and reuse. Formally, it sublimates what is available from a limitation of resources and materials. In the concept lies a wink to the (still naive in my… Read More

Materia 5: Timber

Materia 5: Timber

Gordon Shrigley

This text is the final instalment in a series by Gordon Shrigley titled ‘Materia’ in which the architect meditates on the physical and semiotic nature of a number of everyday construction products.  The language of architectural drawing, although appearing to promise an infinite arena for self-projection, ultimately fails to contain and express… Read More