Medium: print
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Mark Dorrian in Conversation with Michael Webb, Episode 3
21.01.2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Mark Dorrian in Conversation with Michael Webb, Episode 321.01.2019
– Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
The third episode of Michael Webb’s conversation with Mark Dorrian resumes with the fate of the Sin Centre model. The piece is published to mark the entry of the first part of a new model of the Sin Centre into the Drawing Matter collection. The conversation took place on Wednesday,… Read More
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in Conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 2
21.01.2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in Conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 221.01.2019
– Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
Mark Dorrian: I’ve loaded some images – Michael, by the way, doesn’t know what’s coming up. After showing this, the drawing of the building, I thought it would be useful to show a couple of slides about the context in which this project then appeared. The Furniture Manufacturers Building is… Read More
Zaha Hadid
27.11.2018
Zaha Hadid27.11.2018
When, in January 1983, Peter Cook reviewed a recently held exhibition for Zaha Hadid’s 59 Eaton Place, he spoke of the resonance between the individual and their education in developing an architectural identity. [1] He pondered on the development of Hadid over that period, What if fate had led her… Read More
Commonplace
12.11.2018
Commonplace12.11.2018
In 1877, London’s Building News reprinted – as the ‘work of two eminent architects, though it cannot be said to be their joint production’ – an elevation, plan, and partial section published by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a model town house, noting that this supposed ‘London Residence’ had been adapted – with due… Read More
Madelon Vriesendorp
04.11.2018
Madelon Vriesendorp04.11.2018
– Niall Hobhouse and Madelon Vriesdendorp
Excerpted from Madelon Vreisendop in conversation with Niall Hobhouse, RIBA, 2 July 2018
Richard J. Neutra
10.08.2018
Richard J. Neutra10.08.2018
‘Richard J. Neutra has carried on the Wagner tradition of experimentation in new forms, materials and methods of construction… an impetus to the intelligent solution of new problems.’ Ernestine M. Fantl on the Corona Avenue School, ‘Modern Architecture in California’ (Typescript Mimeograph, MoMA Archives, 1935) Just before 6 o’clock on… Read More
Remembered Space
22.04.2018
Remembered Space22.04.2018
A subtle and beguiling assemblage of recent works by Celia Scott is appropriately mounted on the plywood walls of the intimate Velorose Gallery, Charterhouse Square, London (13th April to 18th May 2018). Plywood, aluminium and carefully modulated surfaces that are revealed or obscured by spray paint are the stuff of… Read More
AL_A: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter
05.03.2018
AL_A: V&A Exhibition Road Quarter05.03.2018
Farshid Moussavi’s brief for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition asked for representations of the complexities of designing and realising buildings and structures. We illustrated this by overlaying each level of intervention in a different colour – from the existing V&A stonework in green, the services in purple, to the… Read More
Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten: Swiss Ambassador’s Residence
14.02.2018
Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten: Swiss Ambassador’s Residence14.02.2018
– Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Padmanabhan
There is an uncanny gap between the cold precision of a computer drawing and the confusing uncertainty of the design process. We try to bridge that gap with a collaborative method that includes a lot of discussions and the use of computer-prints, scalpel, glue, pencil and Tipp-Ex. The drawing above… Read More
A Blueprint is… Blue
24.01.2018
A Blueprint is… Blue24.01.2018
A common error in looking at architectural drawings is to mistake mechanical reproductions for originals. Original and copy drawings both physically consist of two elements: the material (like ink) and the support (usually paper). But – and it may seem obvious to say – lines on paper are made by… Read More
The Politics of the Image
05.01.2018
The Politics of the Image05.01.2018
– Maria S. Giudici, Joseph Mercer, Florian Scheucher, Keranie Theodosiou, Livia Wang, Sophie Williams and Feifei Zhou
My course, The Politics of the Image at the Royal College of Art, drew on the Drawing Matter Collection amongst others to explore the construction of images since the Renaissance. This construction has allowed a crafty lie to evolve, be challenged and ultimately influence reality – albeit not always in straightforward ways.… Read More
Parataxis
28.12.2017
Parataxis28.12.2017
‘Whatever elements that may come to hand or that are selected from the profusion of materials within reach, are combined with words to create a simple poetic image. This should amuse, disturb, mystify or provoke reflection. These images above all should entertain – the only sure road to appreciation.’ Man… Read More
Herbert Matter
27.11.2017
Herbert Matter27.11.2017
This is the work of the Swiss photographer and designer Herbert Matter, who after a short career in New York had moved to California in 1943 with his wife, the American painter and art critic Mercedes Carles. Both were friends and associates of Fernand Leger, with whom Herbert had been… Read More
Alvar Aalto’s city
01.11.2017
Alvar Aalto’s city01.11.2017
For whatever reason it is produced, a blueprint solidifies a moment in the design process and further solidifies the project. It is not necessarily the final moment, and often after the blueprints have been produced they might be annotated by one or the other master, resulting in new drawings from… Read More
The Clandeboye Drawings
27.10.2017
The Clandeboye Drawings27.10.2017
The seven Clandeboye drawings, each 35 × 35 cm and on A2 trace, were produced in 1984. The year is significant. Then the AA was busy maintaining a posture of indifference to Jenksian postmodernism, while the possibly visionary (at least in the case of architectural speculation) and certainly introspective 1970s… Read More
All Change on Change Alley
05.10.2017
All Change on Change Alley05.10.2017
At one o’clock in the morning of 25 March 1748, a fire broke out in Exchange Alley in the heart of the City of London. It started in the powder room of a barber and wig maker and by the time it was extinguished, eighty houses had been destroyed and… Read More
Behind the Lines 1
22.09.2017
Behind the Lines 122.09.2017
I look at this drawing and imagine the following scenario: Rex Savidge, architect, is running short of time. He must submit his plan for a commercial development in Newcastle the following day. Giving it a last look over, he is generally pleased with it: he has taken particular care with the… Read More
Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto (RUR)
13.09.2017
Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto (RUR)13.09.2017
Farshid Moussavi’s brilliant call to display architectural working drawings as art in this year’s Royal Academy Summer Show is about as canny a cultural move, vis-a-vis architecture exhibitions, as any in recent memory – and it could only come from an architect. At a stroke she presents architectural drawing at… Read More
The Drawing as Actor
05.09.2017
The Drawing as Actor05.09.2017
In two publications about post-war reconstruction, How should we rebuild London? (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1945) and Die Stalinallee Nationales Aufbauprogramme (Verlag Der Nation Berlin, 1952), the planning ferment in London and Berlin becomes a performance in itself, revealed through the choice of the media and subjects which they each adopt for illustration.… Read More
Drawings in Conversation
01.09.2017
Drawings in Conversation01.09.2017
C. R. Cockerell, Joseph Gwilt and the Royal Exchange Competition Owing to a faulty gas lamp, on the 10th January 1838 the Royal Exchange in the City of London was destroyed by fire. The loss of the building was seen to be potentially catastrophic for trade in the City and… Read More
San Rocco
20.06.2017
San Rocco20.06.2017
This beautiful and black glossy image lies on top of the contrasting ground of a thick, white and matt-surfaced magazine binding. The substance of the drawing is not composed of lines but rather made of solid fields that recoil from each other, very neatly, to leave spaces. These slivers where… Read More
Madelon Vriesendorp and Rem Koolhaas at Van Rooy Gallery, 1980
23.10.2018
Madelon Vriesendorp and Rem Koolhaas at Van Rooy Gallery, 198023.10.2018
– Editors
On 1 October 1980, at the height of postmodernism, Luce van Rooy opened her gallery in Amsterdam, around the corner from the Stedelijk Museum. [1] In a recent interview van Rooy reflects on the history of the gallery: the idea — what she calls a gallery for ‘architecture and related… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric) presentation exhibition DMC sketch elevation