Medium: photograph

The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona

The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona

Kersten Geers, Stefano Graziani and Jelena Pancevac

This is part one of two excerpts chosen from The Urban Fact: A Reference Book on Aldo Rossi. The second text, on Aldo Rossi’s Student Housing in Chieti, completed in 1976, will be available soon. Please see the end of the page for more information on this publication. The Olona… Read More

A Short History of Alberto Ponis on the Sardinian Coast

A Short History of Alberto Ponis on the Sardinian Coast

Sebastiano Brandolini

Alberto Ponis was born in Genoa in 1933. He took his architecture degree in Florence in 1960. His father, Mario Alberto, had founded the M.I.T.A. (Manifattura Italiana Tappeti Artistici) in 1926 in Nervi, near Genoa. The company’s building was built by Luigi Daneri in 1940. Gio Ponti, Arnaldo Pomodoro and… Read More

Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life (2021): Review and Excerpts

Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life (2021): Review and Excerpts

Caroline Voet

The new monograph Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life has arrived, published by ArkDes and Park Books to accompany the exhibition that opened in Stockholm in October 2021 curated by ArkDes director Kieran Long with scenography by Caruso St John Architects (open until August 2022). As an excellent preparation… Read More

Writing Prize 2021: Itsuko Hasegawa, Capturing an Infinite Distance

Writing Prize 2021: Itsuko Hasegawa, Capturing an Infinite Distance

Ahmed Belkhodja

Negatives Of the 120,027 items included in the archives of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, 16,010 are part of the collection called ‘Architecture’, and 22,877 are filed as ‘Negative film’. Astonishingly, only one entry sits in both: ‘Ensemble de 12 négatifs couleur (4 pour le projet Bizan, 6 pour le… Read More

Alberto Ponis on Casa Scalesciani

Alberto Ponis on Casa Scalesciani

Alberto Ponis

The site chosen by Juan S., an Argentinian with a penchant for Italy, was almost alarmingly steep and sheer above the sea. Even the path leading to it was perilous, and trodden with bated breath. During our long conversations about where the house would be built, we were not so… Read More

Hélène Binet: The Intimacy of Making, Three Historical Sites in Korea (2021): Review

Hélène Binet: The Intimacy of Making, Three Historical Sites in Korea (2021): Review

Helen Thomas

What is a myth, today? I shall give at the outset a first, very simple answer, which is perfectly consistent with etymology: myth is a type of speech.– Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1957 This seemingly simple book is a thought-provoking collection of things. There is a lot of room for implication… Read More

Doodles: Stirling Wilford and Associates, 1984–2000

Doodles: Stirling Wilford and Associates, 1984–2000

Marco Iuliano

The architectural trajectory of James Stirling has always been considered that of the individual genius, whilst acknowledging his close links to certain educational and working companions: his lifetime maestro Colin Rowe; the partners James Gowan and Michael Wilford, and the Associates, Laurence Bain and Russell Bevington. Without diminishing the importance and the inspirational role of… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 16: Luis Callejas

Pan Scroll Zoom 16: Luis Callejas

Luis Callejas

This is the sixteenth 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. Here, Luis Callejas (LCLA OFFICE) discusses his teaching studios at the Yale School of Architecture and the… Read More

Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House

Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House

James Gowan, J. M. Richards, Laurent Stalder, James Stirling and Ellis Woodman

This first impetus for this article was provided by Laurent Stalder’s discussion of the sectional perspective drawing for the Isle of Wight house, reproduced here, which led us to J. M. Richards’ seminal essay, and then onward through the literature. In addition, we asked the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Canadian… Read More

Leicester Engineering Building: Completed!

Leicester Engineering Building: Completed!

James Gowan

In this pendant piece to Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction, follow James Gowan, once again, as the photographer of his own architecture. The text below is transcribed from an annotated typescript titled ‘Aspects of Humanism’, July 1989, archived at Drawing Matter. The text was published in Architecture Today as ‘Anatomy… Read More

Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction

Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction

James Gowan

Follow James Gowan, through his own photographs, as he inspects the construction progress of the Leicester Engineering Building. While these photographs may have been taken for immediate use at the time, they now serve as a permanent record of the temporary and internal structures that were later disassembled or concealed.… Read More

The Cottage at Bromley

The Cottage at Bromley

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

Superstudio & Piranesi: Zeno is Immortal

Superstudio & Piranesi: Zeno is Immortal

Olivier Bellflamme

It’s 1777 in the Italian region of Salerno, a man is resting on a massive Doric column, watching his two cows from the ruin of a temple where the weeds grow. This building was, a long time ago, considered as the house of Juno, goddess of fertility and the vital… Read More

Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva

Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva

Rodrigo Dominguez

For the curious visitor that approaches the historic remains of the Temple of Minerva Medica in Rome, it will take a lot of effort to contextualize the building as it could have once been. That which before had allowed for a gentle processional approach to the ruin has now been… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 12: Elizabeth Hatz

Pan Scroll Zoom 12: Elizabeth Hatz

Elizabeth Hatz

This is the twelfth 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, Elizabeth Hatz discusses her personal experience of the pandemic and its consequences for… Read More

Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)

Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)

Cyril Babeev

This text is an excerpt from Mikhail Bulgakov’s series of short vignettes that appeared under the overarching title ‘Golden City’ and were serialised in the Berlin-based Russian migrant ‘Nakanune’ newspaper between 30 September and 14 October 1923. Bulgakov was commissioned to write an account of the first and only All-Russian… Read More

Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): Review & Excerpts

Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): Review & Excerpts

Helen Thomas

Review Making a book about making a building creates a special narrative challenge in the constant battle between reality and myth that vibrates through non-fiction publications and the ways in which we as readers engage with and interpret them. This is complicated even more when making a book about a… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 10: Studio Othenin-Girard

Pan Scroll Zoom 10: Studio Othenin-Girard

Guillaume Othenin-Girard

This is the tenth 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, Guillaume Othenin-Girard discusses his studio at the University of Hong Kong which explored… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 9: The Screen ClassRooms

Pan Scroll Zoom 9: The Screen ClassRooms

Anuj Daga

This is the ninth 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 Anuj Daga, Assistant Professor at the School of Environment & Architecture, Mumbai, explores… Read More

Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion (2005)

Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion (2005)

George Dodds

The following text is an excerpt from George Dodds’ book Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion (2005), an analysis of the historiography and mythography of Mies’s building and its afterlives. The author reminded the Drawing Matter editors of the text, in response to our publication in June 2020 of an… Read More

Excerpt: Shadow Places

Excerpt: Shadow Places

Simon Unwin

The following text is excerpted from Simon Unwin’s book on shadow, in his series Analysing Architecture Notebooks, available here. For 20% off until May 31st 2021, use code KHL20. The piece is illustrated with drawings specially selected by Simon from the Drawing Matter collection. ‘Yea, though I walk through the… Read More

Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique

Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique

Rebecca Siefert

The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid has served as ‘the image of an absolute beginning’, as Rosalind Krauss affirmed in 1986 in ‘The Originality of… Read More

Architecture’s Mirror Stage

Architecture’s Mirror Stage

Michael Abrahamson

Mirrors and mirrored glass, perhaps the most characteristically postmodern of surface treatments, were not only a material choice but also emblematized a turn inward toward what Sylvia Lavin has taken to calling ‘architecture itself.’ As the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan might have put it, it was at this moment that modernist… Read More

Re-presenting the Rococo

Re-presenting the Rococo

David Valinsky

In October 2017, I travelled to the outskirts of Munich to spend three days in the company of Johann Michael Fischer’s church of St Michael at Berg am Laim with the purpose of presenting it in drawings and photographs. The trip was sponsored by the Drawing Matter Trust and was intended to act as… Read More