Medium: print

Protected: Eye, Hand and Mind: An Interview on the Drawing Process 

Protected: Eye, Hand and Mind: An Interview on the Drawing Process 

Bryan Cantley and Helen Castle

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Protected: Atlases: Drawings on Newspaper

Protected: Atlases: Drawings on Newspaper

Paolo Conrad-Bercah

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

Editors

Peter Wilson and Julia Bolles are the founding partners of Architekturbüro BOLLES+WILSON. Peter Wilson was born in Australia, he studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the Architectural Association, where he later taught from 1974–1988 (Diploma Unit Master 1980–88). Julia Bolles was born in Münster and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of… Read More

Invented from Copies

Invented from Copies

Neil Bingham

In 1980, Fred A. Stitt, the doyen of American authors of handbooks on the technical and managerial aspects of architectural practice, defined the distinction between drawing and copy drafting (to use the American spelling of draughting) in uncompromising terms: Drawing is an originating process: a creative, aesthetic, and problem-solving process.… Read More

Concept of Proof

Concept of Proof

Beth George

We talk of the invisible drawings that birth a project, but words persistently catalyse and crystallise thought, providing spur or anchor for the meandering of mind and hand in the extrication of architectures. Publication, specification, contract, critique—words. Our history and very conceptual frameworks rely on the productive and ‘dangerous inversions… Read More

Printed Matters 

Printed Matters 

Maria Mitsoula

Few objects stage anticipation as effectively as a box, especially one whose contents are revealed slowly, piece by piece. The sense of something concealed within prepares the viewer for an experience at once intimate and tactile, one that is focused by the box itself, but that—in the act of unpacking—becomes… Read More

The ‘Typewriter’ Drawing

The ‘Typewriter’ Drawing

Valeriia Chemerisova

The ‘Typewriter’ drawing is made on brown paper mounted on a black backing, its surface carrying both the mechanical impressions of a typewriter and the analogue traces of a black pen layered above them. But unlike later typewriter drawings, which use typed characters as grids, codes, or proto-digital marks, this… Read More

Protected: The Creative Potential of Archival Boundaries

Protected: The Creative Potential of Archival Boundaries

John Walter

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

The Open Hand Reloaded

The Open Hand Reloaded

Maristella Casciato

The above notes are based on a paper first presented at the workshop Long Table Conversation on ‘NonAligned Modernism’ held at the University of Washington in Seattle on October 31, 2025, moderated by Adair Rounthwaite (Art History) and with an introduction by Vikram Prakash (HHF/Architecture). * Maristella Casciato (architect, architectural… Read More

Protected: Collection Guide: Cedric Price

Protected: Collection Guide: Cedric Price

Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

The House Stands Still While Life Moves

The House Stands Still While Life Moves

Alessandro Mendini

The house has a floor sticky like honey; our feet cling to it and we cannot get away from it. The house is a rucksack so huge and full on our shoulders that every movement becomes impossible. The house is an unconditional refuge for those who fear all the mishaps… Read More

On Cedric Price

On Cedric Price

Andrea Branzi

Cedric Price’s thinking and work have had a very particular influence on my work, in the sense that some fundamental choices I have made as an architect have been deeply influenced by his philosophy. In this sense, it seems to me that Cedric Price was one of the few architects… Read More

Collection Guide: Futurism, Rationalism, and Stile Littorio

Collection Guide: Futurism, Rationalism, and Stile Littorio

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

The Drawing Matter collection holds around 70 objects that speak to Italy’s architectural evolution in the early twentieth century. It should be noted that this period was characterised by tremendous stylistic diversity, with movements and groups—often unhappily—coexisting and shifting, ultimately culminating in the dominance of the Stile Littorio.  At the… Read More

Protected: James Gowan’s Schreiber House

Protected: James Gowan’s Schreiber House

Vera Okodugha

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Levers Long Enough to Move the World

Levers Long Enough to Move the World

Andrew Holder

‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world’ — Archimedes Levers Long Enough to Move the World is an exhibition of architectural sketches curated by Andrew Holder at the Pratt School of Architecture, featuring the work of 62 contemporary… Read More

Engraving Shadows

Engraving Shadows

Anne Desmet

In all relief printmaking techniques such as woodcut (in which cuts are made along the plank of a smooth piece of wood) and linocut (involving, like woodcuts, steel gouges with U- and V-shaped cutting tips), as well as wood engraving and even the humble potato-cut, what you leave uncut on… Read More

James Gowan’s Trafalgar Road & East Hanningfield

James Gowan’s Trafalgar Road & East Hanningfield

Vera Okodugha and Ana Francisco Sutherland

To mark the publication of Ana Francisco Sutherland’s remarkable compendium of the modern buildings of Greenwich and Blackheath, this post is presented as a ‘project scrapbook’ that traces two of James Gowan’s social housing projects, Trafalgar Road, London, built between 1964 and 1968, and East Hanningfield, Essex, finished in 1978.… Read More

Collection Guide: Zaha Hadid

Collection Guide: Zaha Hadid

Editors

Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. After studying mathematics at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, from 1968 to 1971, she moved to London in 1972, where she studied architecture at the Architectural Association (AA). It was here that her work began to reference the Russian avant-garde,… Read More

Collection Guide: The Viennese School

Collection Guide: The Viennese School

Iain Boyd Whyte

Drawing Matter’s collection of Viennese drawings from the 19th and early 20th century includes works by Franz Jakob Kreuter, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Schönthal, Emil Hoppe, and Friedrich Ohmann, among others. It was a time of great technological advance, social upheaval, cultural revolt, and changing attitudes to design.  Considered as a group, the… Read More

Collection Guide: Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati

Collection Guide: Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati

Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Francesco Fiammenghi

To probe the long and multifaceted career of Andrea Branzi (1938–2023), one must first turn to his formative years at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence in the early 1960s. At the time, the Florence School became the incubator of several of Italy’s postwar avant-garde groups, including… Read More

Reason for Drawings 

Reason for Drawings 

Samantha Hardingham

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a certain drawing did NOT exist? I am forever grateful to Cedric Price for doing this drawing. If he had not done it, my job of devising a way to order and organise materials for what became Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: a forward-minded retrospective (AA/CCA,… Read More

Building with Writing

Building with Writing

Stan Allen

Stan Allen’s exhibition Building with Writing, an installation documenting 40 years of writing and drawing practice, is currently presented at the Graham Foundation as part of the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial, led by Florencia Rodríguez, Artistic Director, and Igo Kommers Wender, Associate Curator.  The exhibition was curated by Michael Meredith, with… Read More

Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space 

Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space 

Aikaterini Antonopoulou

Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space by Paul Carter mediates between graphic form and text, movement-tracking, and place-making to delineate the interstices of public space: what escapes its formal description and what falls outside official design. The book responds to pertinent concerns about the interface between the designers of public… Read More

A Machine is a House for Making a Living

A Machine is a House for Making a Living

Drawing Architecture Studio

‘Mobility’ has long been a theme in architecture. After observing everyday life in Chinese cities, we became interested in exploring an understanding of mobility, which is not primarily defined by motion, but by the practices of pausing and occupying urban space. The discovery comes from the vehicles used by street… Read More