Medium: drawing
The Polyhedrists (2022) – Review
8 December 2023
The Polyhedrists (2022) – Review8 December 2023
The Polyhedrists is described as ‘a history of the relationship between art and geometry in early modern period’.[1] Despite it being a relatively short book, it offers a complex and confronting view of polyhedra’s history; polyhedra being three-dimensional convex shapes with flat polygonal faces and straight edges. Its author, Noam… Read More
DMJ – The Stereoautograph
6 December 2023
DMJ – The Stereoautograph6 December 2023
The Zeiss Stereoautograph 1914 Bild II is a mammoth device (Fig.1). It weighs over 400kg and has the same footprint as a Smart Car. When it was retired and donated to the Zeiss Archive in 2004, the Technical University of Hanover had to remove part of its roof in order to lift… Read More
The ‘indispensable ingredients of sublimity’: Smirke and Papworth’s Designs for the Wellington Testimonial
20 November 2023
The ‘indispensable ingredients of sublimity’: Smirke and Papworth’s Designs for the Wellington Testimonial20 November 2023
In 2001, the Irish Architectural Archive (IAA) acquired at auction an item described in the catalogue as ‘Architectural Drawing, possibly by Robert Smirke, of Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park’. The unsigned, undated drawing is a perspective view of an obelisk, the base of which is a four-faced distyle Doric temple. This… Read More
Heinz Isler: Natural Hills on Different Edge Lines
14 November 2023
Heinz Isler: Natural Hills on Different Edge Lines14 November 2023
I first encountered Heinz Isler’s thin reinforced concrete shells when I saw his presentation ‘Third Decade of Structural Shells’ at the thirtieth anniversary symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), in Madrid, in September 1989. This was the first time I saw his inspirational drawing ‘Natural Hills on… Read More
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers
9 November 2023
Protected: Emerging Ecologies: O.M. Ungers9 November 2023
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Manufacture of architecture: Joseph Paxton and the development of the Great Stove
9 November 2023
The Manufacture of architecture: Joseph Paxton and the development of the Great Stove9 November 2023
This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. Joseph… Read More
Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2023, ENAC Summer Workshop
1 November 2023
Drawing Research Platform, Somerset, 2023, ENAC Summer Workshop1 November 2023
– Alberto Johnsson, Arthur Masure, Daniel Nitsche, Toby Pullen and Alexander Turner
During a one-week summer workshop at Shatwell Farm, students from the EPFL, alongside young architects from the UK, explored drawing as a key tool of architecture and engineering. Through research into the Drawing Matter collection and the construction of survey drawings, the workshop used drawing as a corporeal form of… Read More
Keep digging and you will find what you are looking for: Alvar Aalto in Germany
27 October 2023
Keep digging and you will find what you are looking for: Alvar Aalto in Germany27 October 2023
In 1957, Alvar Aalto gave a speech in Munich entitled ‘Schöner Wohnen’.[1] He referred to his own design, the Hansaviertel apartment block in Berlin—his first project in Germany—as he described the key concerns in the design of the modern dwelling. (The construction of Aalto’s second German project, the Neue Vahr… Read More
Repton does a Bernini – A crescent for The Ham
24 October 2023
Repton does a Bernini – A crescent for The Ham24 October 2023
Ever since 1743, when John Wood failed to get backers for his vast Royal Forum, the area to the south of South Parade has been treated like the campus of a nondescript university. The chequered gardens of Abbey Orchard have been supplanted by Manvers Street car park, while to the… Read More
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once
20 October 2023
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once20 October 2023
In this film Stephen Bates discusses a group of drawings by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Upper Lawn Pavilion, dating from the late 1950s when the Smithsons bought the site, and the 1970s when the architects proposed several alterations—only some of which were realised. Stephen Bates’ relationship with the… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — I’m going to get medieval on your ass!
16 November 2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — I’m going to get medieval on your ass!16 November 2023
– Adrian Dannatt
‘I’m going to get medieval on your ass!’ Any analogy between the hefty massing of the middle-ages and soi-disant Brutalism is here revived in the bold metal hinges of our garage door, worthy of some château fort. Likewise the solid lead parapet of the roof could well guard a fortress, if also reminiscent of the… Read More
detail domestic St Mary's Grove (series) DMC