Medium: photograph

Singing Songs of Piccadilly: Review

Singing Songs of Piccadilly: Review

Editors

Niall Hobhouse writes about The Buildings of Green Park by Andrew Jones. To purchase the book, click here. Green Park, a pair of anecdotes: 1. Queen Caroline – ‘What would it cost, Sir Robert, to close the Park to the public?’ Walpole – ‘May it please your Majesty, but Three Crowns –… Read More

Charlotte Skene Catling: The Dairy House

Charlotte Skene Catling: The Dairy House

Françoise Astorg Bollack

This project involved the enlargement of a nineteenth-century masonry dairy house built by the owner’s great grandfather for the estate’s cheesemaker. The addition fills a narrow space dug into the hill behind the existing house providing additional bedrooms, bathrooms, and more generous circulation spaces. The building sits in an 850-acre… Read More

Drawing Sacred Forests and Courtyards in South Benin

Drawing Sacred Forests and Courtyards in South Benin

Quentin Nicolaï

The following conversation between the editors of Accattone and Quentin Nicolaï was first published in Accattone 6 (2019). It documents research carried out by Quentin Nicolaï in Abomey, Benin, between January 2014 and June 2018. Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the magazine’s editors for allowing us reproduce… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 6: Emily Wettstein

Pan Scroll Zoom 6: Emily Wettstein

Fabrizio Gallanti and Emily Wettstein

This is the sixth 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 Emily Wettstein, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University GSD. The… Read More

The Fun Palace: Light Adaptation

The Fun Palace: Light Adaptation

Chase Galis

Techniques of architectural drawing have been developed according to the physics of light and our perception of its effects. From the origins of two-dimensional representation – often mythologized in the act of tracing a projected silhouette on a flat surface – to practices of atmospheric simulation in rendering, recognized patterns of light have become essential in the communication of architecture’s spatial… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Architectural Apparitions

Writing Prize 2020: Architectural Apparitions

Anahat Chandra

Some dreams are never meant to see the light of day. Like a wild design that continually finds itself at the bottom of the roster, patiently waiting its turn to be a part of the city’s skyline, it either promises to burn a hole in the pocket of the investor,… Read More

Shower at Shatwell Farm

Shower at Shatwell Farm

Adam Blencowe

Being a designer and adherent of adhocism – speed, economy, improvisation and learning-as-you-go – the materials I use have a strong influence on the outcome of my work. This completely dovetailed with Niall’s brief: to design and build an outdoor toilet and shower for occasional scholars occupying the library at… Read More

Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints

Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints

Nicholas Herrmann

They began to bloom on websites a couple of years or so ago – stretching out on social media, unfurling in the arts sections. Pale alien shapes suspended in deep blue: something like lightning flattened in a flower press; a sleeping creature emerging from a cloud of coral; a spectral… Read More

On a handrail

On a handrail

Jon Lopez

What drew me to the drawings Tony made, and the handrail itself, is the line it treads between standardisation and customisation. The way in which, for instance, standard sections of steel are bundled together and expressed to form thicker newel posts or to hold the glazing panels of the balustrade.… 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

Mies: The Berlin Building Expostition (1974)

Mies: The Berlin Building Expostition (1974)

Philip Johnson

The following text is excerpted from Oppositions 2 (1974): 86–91. The Berlin Building Exposition of 1931 was the largest of its kind ever to be held. With Teutonic thoroughness every material, every method, every theory that had to do with building was shown in the Exposition. The result of this thoroughness, plus… Read More

Mies: The Horizon

Mies: The Horizon

Robin Evans

Perusing the slides I had taken of the reconstructed pavilion, I found it difficult to decide which way up they went — an artefact of photography, no doubt. Then I changed my mind. It was not an artefact of photography, but a property of the pavilion itself, a property of… Read More