Medium: drawing
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism
19 October 2022
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism19 October 2022
As my title indicates, this text will focus on John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses project from the mid-1970s, but I want to approach it in the first instance by way of Roland Barthes’s reflections on the ‘Neutral’. This is the topic of the lectures that Barthes delivered at the Collège de France… Read More
In the Archive: Petit, Lebas, Fontaine, Le Corbusier and Kolář
4 October 2022
In the Archive: Petit, Lebas, Fontaine, Le Corbusier and Kolář4 October 2022
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. In this series, Drawing Matter invites visitors to write about material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that they have viewed as part of their research. In The Library at Night, Alberto Manguel likens a library to a human brain and… Read More
fala: comprehensive
3 October 2022
fala: comprehensive3 October 2022
– fala
This is the second of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Normally, a project is depicted through a series of plans, sections, elevations, and some axonometric drawings, perhaps – every aspect of it explained and documented. We… Read More
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine
26 September 2022
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine26 September 2022
In 1968 Adolfo Natalini’s partner, Frances Brunton, returned to Florence from London with their newborn daughter and a small wooden chest with five drawers. On three sides of the chest, Natalini hand painted sky-blue flowers on an orange background. The chest of drawers was then taken to the Superstudio-studio in… Read More
Where in the World are We? Melbourne Venice Studios 2022
22 September 2022
Where in the World are We? Melbourne Venice Studios 202222 September 2022
Remote teaching as a pandemic consequence has already been a theme for Drawing Matter, in the January 2022 Melbourne University Venice Workshop it reached an almost surreal zenith. Remoteness is fundamental to Australia, whether the extreme separations of the outback or a pre-digital geographic estrangement from global cultural discourses. At… Read More
fala: the single line
19 September 2022
fala: the single line19 September 2022
– fala
This is the first of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. It started from a rather liberating decision to omit thicknesses. Gradually, all the information that wasn’t central to our thinking was removed, avoiding any celebration… Read More
After the Revolution: Dugourc in Spain
16 September 2022
After the Revolution: Dugourc in Spain16 September 2022
After Jean Démosthène Dugourc’s forays into revolutionary paperwork, his return to silk and his migration to Spain to work for the Bourbons in 1800 places pressure on understanding his revolutionary activities, and whether he indeed had but briefly dabbled in the politics of the period before ultimately wishing, in his… Read More
Dugourc’s Playing Cards
14 September 2022
Dugourc’s Playing Cards14 September 2022
After the journée of 10 August, Jean Démosthène Dugourc sought to distance himself from Etienne Anisson-Dupéron. He turned his attention from wallpaper to playing cards, leasing a space with his Jacobin business partner Urbaine Jaume in the former warehouse of the Académie royale de musique, down the street from the… Read More
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle
12 September 2022
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle12 September 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
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)
7 September 2022
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)7 September 2022
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
17 August 2022
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin17 August 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 August 2022
Objects That Meet15 August 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 August 2022
W. R. Lethaby: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth10 August 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 July 2022
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing28 July 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 July 2022
Power & Public Space 7: Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia27 July 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 July 2022
Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)22 July 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 July 2022
Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review18 July 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 July 2022
Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue13 July 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 July 2022
Elia Zenghelis: The Image as Emblem and Storyteller11 July 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
6 July 2022
Power & Public Space 1: Liza Fior – The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden6 July 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 June 2022
Roland Simounet: De La Verité en Architecture24 June 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
Robert Maxwell: The Letter, the Lost Sketchbook and the Lecture
23 September 2022
Robert Maxwell: The Letter, the Lost Sketchbook and the Lecture23 September 2022
– Editors
These three sketches are from a sketchbook that Robert Maxwell used while studying at the Liverpool School of Architecture in 1944. They are reproduced here to mark the publication of Robert Maxwell: the Letter, the Lost Sketchbook and the Lecture, edited by Celia Scott, which is now available through Drawing… Read More
sketch correspondence letters ephemera