Medium: drawing

DMJ – Show

DMJ – Show

Freddie Phillipson

Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler. Where? James Joyce, Ulysses 17.2328-32 [1] Night-time on Eccles Street. Someone is half-dreaming of a mythical bird—a roc—in the Arabian… Read More

Protected: Yes, And

Protected: Yes, And

Emily White

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove – La maison où j’ai grandi

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove – La maison où j’ai grandi

Adrian Dannatt

This is the eighth and concluding part of Adrian Dannatt’s series of reflections on his family home, frequently remodelled and extended over 45 years from 1955, by his father, the architect Trevor Dannatt. Read the introduction to the series here. * Curtains The newly restored house appeared, on the cover no… Read More

Protected: Collection Guide: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Protected: Collection Guide: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Martin Bressani

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

The Right to Imagine: Michael Sorkin’s Visual Argument

The Right to Imagine: Michael Sorkin’s Visual Argument

Marina Correia

On the wall of the third-floor mezzanine of the Spitzer School of Architecture of The City College of New York (CCNY) hangs a wood model titled Urbanagram. It was the product of a collaboration of students of the Master’s in Urban Design Program, directed for almost two decades by Michael Sorkin… Read More

Concept of Proof

Concept of Proof

Beth George

We talk of the invisible drawings that birth a project, but words persistently catalyse and crystallise thought, providing spur or anchor for the meandering of mind and hand in the extrication of architectures. Publication, specification, contract, critique—words. Our history and very conceptual frameworks rely on the productive and ‘dangerous inversions… Read More

Viollet-le-Duc: Drawing Worlds

Viollet-le-Duc: Drawing Worlds

Peter Sealy

In his Postscript to The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco describes the first hundred pages of his bestselling 1980 novel as a form of penance, ‘for the purpose of constructing a reader suitable for what comes afterwards.’[1] Beyond creating an easy heuristic for who should or should not descend further into the world of… Read More

Vanbrugh in the Best Light: Sir John Soane’s Lecture Drawings of Blenheim Palace

Vanbrugh in the Best Light: Sir John Soane’s Lecture Drawings of Blenheim Palace

Frances Sands

The architect Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) is currently enjoying a moment in the sun! 2026 marks the tercentenary of his death and a variety of activities have been organised to celebrate and reassess this most dynamic of British architects, under the banner of ‘Vanbrugh 300’, which is being coordinated by… Read More

Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium

Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium

Owen Hopkins

Apart from the extraordinary dynamism of the composition, one of the most striking things about this drawing of Owen Luder’s design for a new stadium for Sunderland A.F.C. is that the people heading towards the turnstiles aren’t wearing red and white. Indeed, the figures are not your usual football fans—today,… Read More

The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

Editors

In the first three months of 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum presented a small exhibition dedicated to Le Corbusier’s unrealised Olympic Stadium Project for Baghdad. The show was organised by the RIBA, Irena Murray, and Peter Carl, with work loaned from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the Fondation… Read More

Protected: Up in the Air: The Heygate and Aylesbury Estates

Protected: Up in the Air: The Heygate and Aylesbury Estates

Holly Smith

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Protected: The Drawing as a Site of Absence

Protected: The Drawing as a Site of Absence

Francesca Hughes

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing

Carlos Bedoya, PRODUCTORA: Thinking through Drawing

Stan Allen

The first thing to be said about the drawings of Carlos Bedoya is that this is not an exercise in nostalgia, or a case for the lost art of drawing by hand. The architects of PRODUCTORA work in the present, with all the tools and techniques available to them. The… Read More

Protected: Surveying Sierra Nevada

Protected: Surveying Sierra Nevada

Alejandro Morales Martín

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Printed Matters 

Printed Matters 

Maria Mitsoula

Few objects stage anticipation as effectively as a box, especially one whose contents are revealed slowly, piece by piece. The sense of something concealed within prepares the viewer for an experience at once intimate and tactile, one that is focused by the box itself, but that—in the act of unpacking—becomes… Read More

Protected: Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

Protected: Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Protected: Figuring Out

Protected: Figuring Out

Issi Nanabeyin

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

My Parish Drawings

My Parish Drawings

Marina Warner

From an early age I was in love with China and all things Chinese. I don’t know what inspired this passion, but a few years ago I came upon a Rupert Bear cartoon strip and there was the Emperor of China aloft on a flying carpet. I know my father… Read More

Siza on Paper (Exhibition + Talk)

Siza on Paper (Exhibition + Talk)

Editors

On Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March, Drawing Matter presented an exhibition of drawings by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza. The exhibition focused on Siza as a designer of public housing after the Carnation Revolution (1974) and his approaches to drawing. At the centre of the exhibition were three housing… Read More

Protected: Three Drawings

Protected: Three Drawings

atelier local

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing

Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing

Niall Hobhouse

The following text is one of the entries included in the book Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2025) edited by Uwe Fleckner and Mari Lending. The book, presented in the form of a dictionary, examines architectural provenance across 101 key concepts, from acquisition to will. Each… Read More

Protected: An Attardé Draftsman: Giacomo Beverati

Protected: An Attardé Draftsman: Giacomo Beverati

Manuel Orazi

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Scaletales: Dr Franz Gibarian’s Lecture

Scaletales: Dr Franz Gibarian’s Lecture

William Firebrace

The following fictional text was extracted from William Firebrace’s Scaletales (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln, 2026). The book investigates the various meanings of the word scale through a story about two elderly women on a journey from Finland through central Europe to the Black Sea. They… Read More

Protected: Collection Guide: Carlo Marchionni

Protected: Collection Guide: Carlo Marchionni

Elizabeth Kieven

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.