Medium: drawing
Sketches from Algiers
02.08.2021
Sketches from Algiers02.08.2021
In October 1975 I returned to Cambridge to complete my architecture course. I had spent my year out in London with MacCormac and Jamieson, an exciting time as it was early days for this young practice and I was one of their very first assistants. In fact, I nearly didn’t… Read More
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House
28.07.2021
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House28.07.2021
The editors were thrilled to receive this response from Neil Jackson to our publication of drawings and literature relating to Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight house. We are always interested in receiving comments and feedback from our readers: editors@drawingmatter.org. In taking the plan of the Stirling & Gowan’s Isle… Read More
Insignificance 4: Self-reflexive
26.07.2021
Insignificance 4: Self-reflexive26.07.2021
Whoever decides to study the conditions of a practice of imagining architecture through/as line will, I am afraid, be left in despair. Once the theatrical mask of line’s incontrovertible instrumentality is seen to slip, line’s solidity, its all too evident honesty as a simple mimetic tool, turns up by and… Read More
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House
25.07.2021
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House25.07.2021
I find myself lost in the woods, then reorientated, guided by the centralised chimney. Standing dead centre in front of the gate lodge, my gaze is lifted to the space between chimney and sky, between foreground or background. A cloud of white smoke disguises itself as an English cloud, passing… Read More
The James Clarke Remake
20.07.2021
The James Clarke Remake20.07.2021
– Oscar Binder and Nikolaus Podlaha
In 1989 the architect James Clarke was commissioned to propose a design for the new Multimedia Library of Mr. Yamamoto in Tokyo, Japan. Although never built, and only a handful of sketches were ever published in some obscure magazines of the mid 90s, the drawings were highly praised by the… Read More
Drawing the Brunswick Centre
19.07.2021
Drawing the Brunswick Centre19.07.2021
In the 1960s, when I was a penniless AA student, I used to produce perspective drawings for various offices to help pay the rent. Among them were the Smithsons, for whom I did several of the Economist, mainly interiors; Colquhoun and Miller, the chemistry building at Holloway College; YRM and… Read More
On Pristine Boxes and Primeval Huts
13.07.2021
On Pristine Boxes and Primeval Huts13.07.2021
Along with his Do Hit Chair (2000), a pristine stainless steel box measuring 1000 x 700 x 750 mm, Dutch-born designer Marijn van der Poll supplies a sledgehammer. In an act of brute physical force he requires the user to expressively sculpt his own seating morphology, not only allowing but… Read More
36 Elevations
12.07.2021
36 Elevations12.07.2021
I began this series of drawings with something else in mind. The first picture was to be drawn freehand, but I took a wrong turn straight away by setting up a structure using a set-square around which the composition would be based. I realised that the structure was already a… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 15: Other Architects
07.07.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 15: Other Architects07.07.2021
– Fabrizio Gallanti, Grace Mortlock and David Neustein
This is the fifthteenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio talks to Grace Mortlock and David Neustein of the Sydney-based practice Other Architects… Read More
Luc Deleu & T.O.P. OFFICE: Future Plans, 1970–2020 (2021) – Review
07.07.2021
Luc Deleu & T.O.P. OFFICE: Future Plans, 1970–2020 (2021) – Review07.07.2021
Future Plans is one of those titles with double and ambiguous meanings. Not exactly as twofold as the most famous ‘The Architecture of the City’ but maybe leaving us equally free to choose. Is the term ‘future’ to be considered as an adjective or a subject? Does this book thus… Read More
Shatwell Farm: A Step Up
06.07.2021
Shatwell Farm: A Step Up06.07.2021
Imagined as something in between a small building or piece of furniture and a block for mounting a horse, these steps are a shortcut to an out-of-sight sauna that sits above a slope amongst the trees. They are directly visible when leaving the dairy house, sitting to one side of… Read More
The Cottage at Bromley
28.06.2021
The Cottage at Bromley28.06.2021
– Tim Anstey and Mari Lending
Enjoyable finds in archives often emerge between the lines. Inside RIBA Collections, which is organised to form a narrative celebrating architects and their works, we found a gem of modern cultural history, consisting of three architectural plans and four letters (ten pages altogether, eight in transcript, two typed). [1] The… Read More
Florian Beigel & Aru’s Pojagi House: Searching for the Essential
28.06.2021
Florian Beigel & Aru’s Pojagi House: Searching for the Essential28.06.2021
Below is a sketch of a traditional South Korean Pojagi (a handcrafted patchwork tapestry) drawn by Florian Beigel. Described as ‘beautifully unsure’, it shows the importance of the sketch in translating between a reference and the key concept of the Pojagi House, designed by Beigel and the Architectural Research Unit… Read More
Folding Landscapes: The Maps of Tim Robinson
23.06.2021
Folding Landscapes: The Maps of Tim Robinson23.06.2021
While walking the land, I am the pen on the paper; while drawing this map, my pen is myself walking the land. I wanted to short circuit the polarities of objectivity and subjectivity, and try keep faith with reality. – Robinson We should maintain an awareness of the stories hidden… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 14: Alfredo Thiermann
16.06.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 14: Alfredo Thiermann16.06.2021
This is the fourteenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode, Alfredo Thiermann reflects on his experience of drawing during a pandemic, in both… Read More
The Language of Architecture: Peter Märkli’s system of proportion
15.06.2021
The Language of Architecture: Peter Märkli’s system of proportion15.06.2021
Peter Märkli’s hand-drawn section of the ancient monument Hagia Sophia (532–7) is part of a working process developed alongside his design work. The output is a collection of investigative drawings that document sacred archetypal buildings, and articulate his resolved thesis that ‘architecture has a language’. The drawing illustrates a system… Read More
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh
15.06.2021
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh15.06.2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
The Over Under: Drawing as process
10.06.2021
The Over Under: Drawing as process10.06.2021
The Over Under series is a look at drawing as process, but in this instance, not the process of designing a building or object, but rather an amplification and deepening of the reality we encounter. Reality here begins with a place but has since transformed into working and imagining through… Read More
Insignificance 3: Mourning Work
09.06.2021
Insignificance 3: Mourning Work09.06.2021
All drawings contain traces of all previously drawn mediations. [1] All drawings are silent acts of memorialising (by employing inter-subjective readings of iconography, lineage, parody, reverie and reflexivity) what has been drawn before, or thought to have been so, or simply, what has been, consciously misplaced. [2] The text above… Read More
The Future City
09.06.2021
The Future City09.06.2021
Antonio Sant’Elia foresees the technological cities of the mid to late 20th century. High-rise towers shooting skyward, train lines and highways articulated as horizontally streaking into vanishing points, and aeroplanes arriving and departing omnidirectionally. Similarly, Winold Reiss’s Future City: Study for a Mural, is an homage to technological advancement, and… Read More
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh
07.06.2021
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh07.06.2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
The H-plan: Breuer, Stirling, Gowan
05.08.2021
The H-plan: Breuer, Stirling, Gowan05.08.2021
– Anthony Vidler
The interesting note by Neil Jackson tying Gowan and his Isle of Wight House to the bi-nuclear plans of Breuer and then to Craig Ellwood’s Hillsborough House, reminds me of Stirling’s own early interest in Breuer, whose Connecticut work he saw during his 1948 internship in New York during his… Read More
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