Medium: print
Lines, Drawings, the Human Condition
13.10.2021
Lines, Drawings, the Human Condition13.10.2021
– Tim Ingold, Momoyo Kaijima, Andreas Kalpakci and Anh-linh Ngo
This conversation between Tim Ingold, Momoyo Kaijima, Andreas Kalpakci and Anh-linh Ngo was first published, in German translation, in issue 238 of ARCH+ (March 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the editors of ARCH+ for allowing us to publish the original English version of the text. Momoyo Kaijima: With… Read More
Disney: The Architecture of Staged Realities
10.09.2021
Disney: The Architecture of Staged Realities10.09.2021
‘Project Life Cycle’ provides a brief look into the complex work behind the scenes of a Walt Disney Company production. It is a meticulous formalisation that maps the industrial-organisational apparatus of the life cycle of a Disney project. The creative process is abstracted into a sequence of decisions, a neatly… Read More
Piranesi Unbound (2020): Review
19.08.2021
Piranesi Unbound (2020): Review19.08.2021
There is much to admire in this sequel to Heather Hyde Minor’s Piranesi’s Lost Words (Penn State, 2015), which sets out to ‘explore new territory by reimagining his artistic production in terms of his books’. Whereas Lost Words drew attention to Piranesi as an author who combined texts and images… Read More
From Diderot to Tokyo: Mechanical, Subjective and Digital Time
23.06.2021
From Diderot to Tokyo: Mechanical, Subjective and Digital Time23.06.2021
The absolute precision and technical specificity of Diderot’s encyclopaedia plates, particularly those devoted to Horlogerie, mark a critical moment in the transition from speculative to operative science, from the pre-industrial to a modernist ontology of technical instrumentalisation. Here on these pages, artisan craft is ransomed to the immanent logic of… Read More
26 Kingly Street Co-Op
21.06.2021
26 Kingly Street Co-Op21.06.2021
– Editors
Throughout the 1960s, the Artists’ Own Gallery at 26 Kingly Street in Soho held exhibitions, events and gigs. It was run by a group of artists, including Keith Albarn and his wife, Hazel, who exhibited her work there. Malcolm McLaren presented the first public showing of his work at the Gallery… Read More
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review
04.05.2021
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review04.05.2021
In a series of essays and lectures developed between 1939 and 1943, the philosopher of science Edgar Zilsel identified three distinct sources of knowledge in the Renaissance. In the late-medieval period, writes Zilsel, the traditional learning associated with the universities was still theological and scholastic in character. The texts preserved… Read More
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)
03.05.2021
Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)03.05.2021
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
Sébastien Marot’s Taking The Country’s Side (2019): Review & Excerpt
19.04.2021
Sébastien Marot’s Taking The Country’s Side (2019): Review & Excerpt19.04.2021
Review On the occasion of the publication of this book, and the associated exhibition, which was a part of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale of 2019, Sébastien Marot gave a talk that positioned his work about the Country’s Side in relation to Rem Koolhaas’s almost contemporaneous Guggenheim exhibition, Countryside. Marot was… Read More
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): Review & Excerpts
30.03.2021
Flores & Prats Sala Beckett International Drama Centre (2020): Review & Excerpts30.03.2021
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
Stan Allen’s Situated Objects (2020): Review & Excerpt
24.02.2021
Stan Allen’s Situated Objects (2020): Review & Excerpt24.02.2021
Review Three times a week a package arrives in Somerset with another Practice Monograph, and the generous proposal that we might want to add it to the library at Drawing Matter. This is clearly an old story – somewhere we have a copy of one of John Soane’s endless books… Read More
In Search of an Honest Map
22.02.2021
In Search of an Honest Map22.02.2021
We don’t experience place as maps would have us believe. We might technically exist within the map, an orientation marker besieged by the total sum of data, every landmark, park and street swarming around us at all times. But our perspective is only partial – a patchwork of neighbourhoods, structures… Read More
Singing Songs of Piccadilly: Review
16.02.2021
Singing Songs of Piccadilly: Review16.02.2021
– 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
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy
09.02.2021
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy09.02.2021
John Britton, a topographer and antiquarian by trade, began preparations to publish a guidebook to John Soane’s house-museum in 1825. The earliest mention of such an endeavour appears in a letter to Soane dated 3 November, in which Britton outlines his desire to ‘produce a vol to surprise the public, and… Read More
Drawing the Curtain: Entangling rendering and theatrical space
02.02.2021
Drawing the Curtain: Entangling rendering and theatrical space02.02.2021
Pliny the Elder recounted the following story in Naturalis Historia: The two great painters of classical Greece, Zeuxis and Parrhasius staged a contest to determine the greater painter. When Zeuxis unveiled his painting, the grapes he depicted appeared so real that a bird flew down to peck at them. When… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 6: Emily Wettstein
18.01.2021
Pan Scroll Zoom 6: Emily Wettstein18.01.2021
– 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 Values of Profiles (1951)
08.01.2021
The Values of Profiles (1951)08.01.2021
Provoked by the assertion of rational architecture, the beginnings of modern non-figurative art coincide in time with the exclusion from the world of living forms of cornices and profiles, the most evidently ‘abstract’ elements of ancient architecture. At least two reasons may be relevant to this singular phenomenon: one is… Read More
Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints
21.12.2020
Anna Atkins: Laying Out the Blueprints21.12.2020
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
Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints
07.12.2020
Vitruvius: Follow the Footprints07.12.2020
An intriguing Italian Renaissance drawing from the mid-sixteenth century has recently received critical attention through Drawing Matter. [1] Both the recto and the verso of the paper sheet have an ancient temple plan in perspective in a landscape setting, drawn in brown ink and attributed to the Sangallo circle as… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered
05.12.2020
Writing Prize 2020: Domestic Space, Registered05.12.2020
– Laura Bonell and Daniel López-Dòriga
Around 200 AD, a map of the city of Rome was carved on marble at a scale of approximately 1:240. It measured 18 meters wide by 13 meters high and comprised 150 marble slabs hung on an interior wall of the Templum Pacis. The Forma Urbis Romae or Severan Marble Plan, as… Read More
Collection of Sections
02.12.2020
Collection of Sections02.12.2020
The following drawings and commentaries have been excerpted from Visual Discoveries: A Collection of Sections (Oro Editions, 2020). The publication surveys the use of section drawings in the histories of architecture and other professions, from the 17th century to the present. More information on the book can be found here.… Read More
Outside In
23.11.2020
Outside In23.11.2020
Music plays from behind a curtain. Lights come on and you see that the curtain runs along two sides of a carpet whose centre hosts a leopard skin cushion. There is a chair at one side of the carpet and at the opposite end, a single column. Not before long… Read More
All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture
09.11.2020
All back to front: D’Aviler’s Cours D’Architecture09.11.2020
In Louis de Boulogne’s drawing, now in the Drawing Matter collection, Architecture appears as a young woman. She sits leaning on an altar with a Corinthian capital at her feet, compasses in one hand and a portrait of Vignola in the other. Behind her are the ruins of Rome. It… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant
09.11.2020
Writing Prize 2020: To Measure a Croissant09.11.2020
‘Through modesty, restraint, and measured discipline, immeasurable delights are made possible.’ James Corner, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (1996) C. To measure a croissant, we might: 1.1 Evaluate all ingredients involved: flour, sugar, milk, yeast, salt and butter. 1.2 Count the number of folds the butter and dough must… Read More
The Order of Terror
28.09.2021
The Order of Terror28.09.2021
– Deanna Petherbridge
This text is the fourth in a series by artist Deanna Petherbridge in which she comments on a number of her recent pen and ink drawings. The drawings use imagined architectural imagery as a metaphorical means to deal with complex subject matter about social and political issues. Read the introduction to the series, here.… Read More
art practice drawing as metaphor (series)