Medium: drawing

Startha Éagsula: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid

Startha Éagsula: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid

Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey

Around the time she made this super-skinny scheme for Berlin, Zaha came to Dublin to lecture at the National Gallery. She showed her design for the Taoiseach’s House, breaking out of the walled garden in the Phoenix Park, alongside her breakthrough project for the Hong Kong Peak and other funny… Read More

Drawing, Collaging, Rendering

Drawing, Collaging, Rendering

Cameron Lintott

When the ‘hard-line drawing’ has become so synonymous with the image of the architect it is easy to forget that the convenience of the everyday pen is relatively recent. For most of the long history of the world’s second-oldest profession, pen, paint and ink were reserved for competition boards or… Read More

Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints

Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints

Paul Emmons

An intriguing Italian Renaissance drawing from the mid-sixteenth century has recently received critical attention through Drawing Matter. [1] Both the recto and the verso of the paper sheet have an ancient temple plan in perspective in a landscape setting, drawn in brown ink and attributed to the Sangallo circle as… Read More

Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan

Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan

Thomas O’Brien

There is a ramp;There is a staggering of volumes in plan and section, in out, in out;There is a tapering toward the top;The emphasis is on the public ambulatory spaces;There are people ambulating about;The proportion and judgement of the volumes appear to be empathetic to people;The undercroft condition is important… Read More

Collection of Sections

Collection of Sections

Allen Keith Yee

The following drawings and commentaries have been excerpted from Visual Discoveries: A Collection of Sections (Oro Editions, 2020). The publication surveys the use of section drawings in the histories of architecture and other professions, from the 17th century to the present. More information on the book can be found here.… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Smudgy Logic – A Short Story

Writing Prize 2020: Smudgy Logic – A Short Story

Aris Kafantaris

‘it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them.’– Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation ‘so you compute with smudgy pictures?’– K-32, Universal Fabricator ‘But what does it do?’ insisted Kei in his eerily smooth, synthetic voice. ‘Are you really asking me what my drawing does?’ Miho’s… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Paul Dillon Architects on Florian Beigel and Philip Christou

Startha Éagsula: Paul Dillon Architects on Florian Beigel and Philip Christou

Paul Dillon

This drawing is a development sketch for their proposed part in the rebuilding of the last remaining shanty town outside of Seoul, South Korea. It remains unbuilt. The model is instructional, suggestive of a final building, uses found, recycled materials. The use is not specified. The process of building is… Read More

William Heath Robinson ‘Tightening the Green Belt’

William Heath Robinson ‘Tightening the Green Belt’

Laura Freeman

On 22 March 1921, The Times reported on ‘the urgent need of a green belt being preserved round London.’ It was the first recorded use of the phrase. By the time William Heath Robinson came to makes sketches for ‘Tightening the Green Belt’ (c.1935–47), the urban ring o’ roses was familiar enough… Read More

Aldo Rossi: The First Sketch and the Final Drawing

Aldo Rossi: The First Sketch and the Final Drawing

Andrea Leonardi

The following letter was sent to the Drawing Matter editors by Andrea Leonardi, a member of Rossi’s office for nine years.   A few days ago my dear friend Maurizio Diton, sent me an article he wrote for you in October 2019, ‘The Office Copier and Baptism by Colour: Working… Read More

Drawing is discovery (1953)

Drawing is discovery (1953)

John Berger

For the artist drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase, it is quite literally true. It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him, to dissect it in his mind’s eye and put it together… Read More

Outside In

Outside In

Emily Priest

Music plays from behind a curtain. Lights come on and you see that the curtain runs along two sides of a carpet whose centre hosts a leopard skin cushion. There is a chair at one side of the carpet and at the opposite end, a single column. Not before long… Read More

Startha Éagsula: David Leech Architects on Barthélemy Enfantin

Startha Éagsula: David Leech Architects on Barthélemy Enfantin

David Leech

The colourful ink and pencil drawing of Barthélemy Enfantin seeks to establish a set of rules for a new open metropolis. Without site, set out in all axes, and with the edges of the drawing alluding to a non-determined repetition, it was possibly drawn for continuous reuse and translation. Like… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 4: Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Pan Scroll Zoom 4: Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Sofia von Ellrichshausen, Fabrizio Gallanti and Mauricio Pezo

This is the fourth 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 interviews Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen of Pezo von… Read More

Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric

Sigurd Lewerentz: Siting the Axonometric

Stan Allen

One way to think about an axonometric drawing is as a perspective with the vanishing point at infinity. This means that the lines of projection are parallel, which assures dimensional consistency. Early treatises, for example, spoke of parallel projection as analogous to shadows cast by the sun; not, strictly speaking,… Read More

Bramante: Five Dots

Bramante: Five Dots

Guido Beltramini

The remote past is distant and faded. Original objects and documents that might be used to study it are scarce. They are often uncooperative and most of the time they don’t tell the truth, because they have been reframed by history’s ‘victors’ over the centuries. We must always bear in… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing

Writing Prize 2020: Appropriation and Drawing

Marko Skoblar

Similar to many of Rossi’s drawings, the Urban Fragment presents us with a collection of his most cherished forms – a primordial tower, the hand of a saint, and fragments of his own projects, such as the Gallaratese 2 housing complex in Milan and the Cemetery of San Cataldo. In… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Steve Larkin Architects on Walter Pichler

Startha Éagsula: Steve Larkin Architects on Walter Pichler

Steve Larkin

This text has been excerpted from Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories (2020), a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. Friedrich… Read More

All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture

All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture

Richard Emerson

In Louis de Boulogne’s drawing, now in the Drawing Matter collection, Architecture appears as a young woman. She sits leaning on an altar with a Corinthian capital at her feet, compasses in one hand and a portrait of Vignola in the other. Behind her are the ruins of Rome.  It… Read More

Tree Speech

Tree Speech

Sylvia Lavin

The following text is the fourth of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Hugh Casson’s ‘Diary’

Writing Prize 2020: Hugh Casson’s ‘Diary’

Laura Freeman

Hugh Casson did it in the car. He did in in the Opera House, in Westminster Abbey and at the Buckingham Palace Garden Party. He did it in Goa, Mykonos and at Loughborough University. Wherever he went, whatever he saw, he drew. He drew to keep his eyes keen and… Read More

Startha Éagsula: Níall McLaughlin Architects on Basil Spence

Startha Éagsula: Níall McLaughlin Architects on Basil Spence

Níall McLaughlin

This text has been excerpted from Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories (2020), a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. The… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Held Fast: SITE’s Ghost Parking Lot

Writing Prize 2020: Held Fast: SITE’s Ghost Parking Lot

Anna Renken

The scene might not appear unusual at first: cars are parked in a row near a commercial building with pedestrians passing on a sidewalk. On closer examination, though, the edges of the finely crosshatched cars appear softer than those of the building and roads. The cars seem to be draped… Read More

Trees Push Back

Trees Push Back

Sylvia Lavin

The following text is the third of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: The Best Future

Writing Prize 2020: The Best Future

Cameron Lintott

When James Wines was commissioned to design a series of big-box-retail sheds for ‘Best Products’—a now defunct chain of mail-order catalogue showrooms—it couldn’t have seemed illustrious. A shed’s objective is to enclose maximum space for minimum cost. The only real design element is the front facade, typically topped with a… Read More