Medium: drawing

Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle

Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle

Francesco Paini

This drawing is a print of a hand drawing I made eighteen years ago on a roll of tracing paper. The original drawing, made with rapidograph pens and a pencil, is now lost. Last month this blueprint was moved to Drawing Matter’s archive. Drawing Matter asked me to explain why… Read More

Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)

Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)

Robert Maxwell

The essay by Robert Maxwell linked below was sent to Drawing Matter by Celia Scott earlier this year. It was first published in Architectural Design, March 1977, as part of a longer feature titled ‘The Role of Ideology’, which discussed the theme through the writing of the architect and historian… Read More

Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin

Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin

Cormac Murray

This is an extract of the construction drawings produced by John M. Johansen’s office in 1963 for the cylindrical US Embassy in Dublin. It is a three-dimensional ink drawing of the external precast concrete structure, describing two single-storey bays in isolation. Viewed abstractly it could almost be an anatomical study,… Read More

Objects That Meet

Objects That Meet

Lars Lerup

Revered objects that move about in design circles and are found in publications, museums, and galleries earn their status through persistence over time. Take two famous chairs, Gerrit Rietveld’s Red Blue chair of 1918–23 and Thomas Lee’s Adirondack chair of 1903. All chairs have met just by being chairs, but… Read More

W. R. Lethaby: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth

W. R. Lethaby: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth

Hugh Strange

This is the first text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. Here we start at the beginning with Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, first published in 1891. In many respects, and certainly in relation to his later output, William Richard Lethaby’s first book,… Read More

Dalibor Vesely: Shared Horizons

Dalibor Vesely: Shared Horizons

Biba Dow

Looking at these drawings takes me instantly back to 1993. I am sitting next to Dalibor Vesely at my desk in Scroope Terrace in Cambridge. He is talking quietly and drawing on a stack of tracing paper which he has brought with him. He draws with a light hand in… Read More

The Cod of São Victor

The Cod of São Victor

Pedro Bandeira

The following text on Mário Ramos and Fernando Barroso’s student work at the Porto School is excerpted from the publication Porto School, B Side 1968–1978 (An Oral History) (CIAJG & Documenta, 2014).  Jacinto Rodrigues recalls that in 1976 Mário Ramos, Fernando Barroso, Graça Nieto Guimarães and Maria de Lurdes Mendonça developed a project to… Read More

Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing

Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing

Mark Dorrian and Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Drawing Matter is delighted to present three texts by Alberto Pérez-Gómez on architecture and its representation, the first writings by him to be carried on the Drawing Matter website. The first, ‘Architecture as Drawing’, is an early essay that initially appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education in 1982, a… Read More

Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia

Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia

Matthew Blunderfield and Mabel O. Wilson

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: In 2020 The Memorial to Enslaved Labourers opened at the University of Virginia, designed as a collaboration between Höweler+Yoon Architecture, Mabel O.… Read More

Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)

Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)

Matthew Blunderfield and André Patrão

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Parc de la Villette was emblematic of the strong ties made between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy in the 1980s, where… Read More

Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review

Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review

Peter Carl

The exhibition of Freddie Phillipson’s drawings reconstructing the Dublin of James Joyce’s Ulysses opened on Bloomsday, helping to celebrate the centenary of the publication of the novel. The exhibition is essential viewing for anyone interested in how the European city and its architecture support a culture, and for anyone interested… Read More

Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue

Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue

Matthew Blunderfield and Manuel Herz

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Last year the Swiss practice Manuel Herz Architects completed a wooden synagogue West of Kyiv at Babyn Yar, the site of one… Read More

Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller

Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller

Richard Hall

We recently arranged for Elia Zenghelis to give a presentation under the title ‘The Image as Emblem and Storyteller’ via the Architecture Foundation’s YouTube channel. The talk summarises a thesis that Elia has been continuously developing throughout his career: from OMA’s polemical early work, via decades as one of the… Read More

Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Matthew Blunderfield and Liza Fior

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: The Dalston Eastern Curve garden began as a meanwhile scheme, but over the past decade has embedded itself at the centre of… Read More

Roland Simounet: De La Verité en Architecture

Roland Simounet: De La Verité en Architecture

Pierre Riboulet

For an artist, ‘getting down to work’ is an instinct carried out spontaneously. […] The first outpouring in the pages of the sketchbook, when thought turns into action, at the meeting point between a project and a site, is so strong sometimes, so commanding, that one has the feeling that… Read More

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II

Freddie Phillipson

This is part two of two posts pairing Freddie Phillipsons’s drawings from The Ulysses Project with excerpts from James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, until 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international programme of events celebrating 100 years… Read More

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I

Freddie Phillipson

This is part one of two posts pairing Freddie Phillipsons’s drawings from The Ulysses Project with excerpts from James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, until 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international programme of events celebrating 100 years… Read More

Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House

Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House

Janet Parks

A recent acquisition of six drawings by the American architect Benjamin Wistar Morris reveals his long involvement with one of the most important urban projects of the twentieth century. Morris’s role in this project was a highlight of his career although he has not been widely associated with it. A… Read More

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction

The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction

Freddie Phillipson

This text introduces The Ulysses Project by architect Freddie Phillipson, his exploration of the relationship between the buildings of Dublin and James Joyce’s landmark novel. The drawings are on display at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, from 17 June – 19 August 2022. The exhibition is part of Ulysses100, an international… Read More

The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves

The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves

André Tavares

In 1586 Domenico Fontana completed the extraordinary task, commissioned by Pope Sixtus V, of moving the Vatican obelisk. The structure was said to have a ‘mysterious magic of an unknown civilization’, accepted by Christians due to the belief that it had witnessed the martyrdom of Saint Peter. In this text, André… Read More

Opportunism

Opportunism

Richard Hall and Emma Rutherford

While declaring explicitly architectural intentions (especially in the beginning), the enthusiastic appropriation of technologies and techniques peripheral to architecture has been a constant theme in OMA’s work. In 1976, Elia Zenghelis commented on the role of the telephone in their design process. [1] The photocopier and commercial printing would open up… Read More

Les Fêtes de Nuit (1937)

Les Fêtes de Nuit (1937)

Robert Chenevier

This is the best concise account of the technical sophistication behind the light and water installations created along and beside the Seine, for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937). We have added a group of gouache drawings by the architect René-André Coulon, made in the design phase for… Read More

William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England

William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England

Elizabeth Deans

During the upheavals of the Civil War, Westminster Abbey had functioned as the church of the state for the Commonwealth. Upon the Restoration of Charles II, the Abbey resumed its historic role as the coronation church for English monarchs. [1] Parliament voted towards restoring the fabric, reinstituting its monarchical function… Read More

Robert Adam: The Long Gallery at Syon

Robert Adam: The Long Gallery at Syon

Stephen Astley, Adriano Aymonino, Markus Lähteenmäki and Frances Sands

On 18 December 2015, Frances Sands and Stephen Astley took out two leather-bound volumes from the Robert Adam Archive and laid them on the long table in the first-floor library at Sir John Soane’s museum. Adriano Aymonino and Markus Lähteenmäki, the initiators and editors of the Soane Oral Project, joined… Read More