Medium: drawing
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle
12.09.2022
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle12.09.2022
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
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin
17.08.2022
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin17.08.2022
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
15.08.2022
Objects That Meet15.08.2022
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
10.08.2022
W. R. Lethaby: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth10.08.2022
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
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing
28.07.2022
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing28.07.2022
– 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
27.07.2022
Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia27.07.2022
– 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)
22.07.2022
Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)22.07.2022
– 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
18.07.2022
Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review18.07.2022
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
13.07.2022
Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue13.07.2022
– 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
11.07.2022
Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller11.07.2022
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
06.07.2022
Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden06.07.2022
– 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
24.06.2022
Roland Simounet: De La Verité en Architecture24.06.2022
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
17.06.2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part II17.06.2022
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
16.06.2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Part I16.06.2022
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
10.06.2022
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House10.06.2022
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
08.06.2022
The Ulysses Project: Architecture and the City through James Joyce’s Dublin: Introduction08.06.2022
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
06.06.2022
The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves06.06.2022
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
02.06.2022
Opportunism02.06.2022
– 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)
30.05.2022
Les Fêtes de Nuit (1937)30.05.2022
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
18.05.2022
William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England18.05.2022
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
13.05.2022
Robert Adam: The Long Gallery at Syon13.05.2022
– 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
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)
07.09.2022
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)07.09.2022
– 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
urban form