Medium: text
Cedric Price: Parc de la Villette
18 November 2024
Cedric Price: Parc de la Villette18 November 2024
The following account looks into the drawing DMC 1438 related to Price’s Parc de la Villette competition entry, to quest for the modes in which this media object resituates his design approach of design for pleasure, not only as the evolution of his practice, but crucially as part of an… Read More
OMA: Rem Koolhaas—Initiative
31 October 2024
OMA: Rem Koolhaas—Initiative31 October 2024
This is the sixth and final post, in the series titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Structures and Sequences of Spaces
17 October 2024
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Structures and Sequences of Spaces17 October 2024
Marco Vanucci and Drawing Matter revisit three seminal texts of Luigi Moretti, not generally available in translation. Christopher Huw Evans has translated the three texts for Drawing Matter. The first post presented Luigi Moretti’s article ‘Eclecticism and Unity of Language’ (published in the first issue of Spazio), and the second post featured Moretti’s… Read More
Protected: Carcassonne and Viollet-le-Duc
8 October 2024
Protected: Carcassonne and Viollet-le-Duc8 October 2024
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Abstract Forms of Baroque Sculpture
26 September 2024
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Abstract Forms of Baroque Sculpture26 September 2024
Marco Vanucci and Drawing Matter revisit three seminal texts of Luigi Moretti, not generally available in translation. Christopher Huw Evans has translated the three texts for Drawing Matter. The first post presented Luigi Moretti’s opening article ‘Eclecticism and Unity of Language’ that was published in the first issue of Spazio. This second post presents… Read More
A Missing Drawing
22 August 2024
A Missing Drawing22 August 2024
Being casualy in the Privy Gallery at White-hall, his Majestie [Charles II] gave me thanks (before divers Lords & noble men) for my Book of Architecture & Sylva againe: That they were the best designed & usefull for the matter & subject, the best printed & designd (meaning the Tallè doucès [engravings] of the Paralelles) that… Read More
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Eclecticism and Unity of Language
31 July 2024
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Eclecticism and Unity of Language31 July 2024
In the newfound spirit that emerged at the end of the Second World War, Rome became the epicentre of a cultural renaissance. In a context marked by the dynamic interplay between the innovative language of the modern avant-garde and the city’s artistic heritage, Luigi Moretti emerged as a key figure… Read More
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-1939
8 July 2024
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-19398 July 2024
When the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner was asked to draw up an inventory of interwar buildings that deserved to be placed on the Statutory List, the so-called ‘Pevsner 50’ that resulted was almost entirely composed of the whitest of white modernist buildings. Similarly, John Summerson argued that the only thing… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter
25 June 2024
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter25 June 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The Frank Lloyd Wright collection is of primary interest from 1936 to 1951, and especially for a small group of studies and presentations for the shaping of domestic space, dwelling within landscape, and interior fittings. There are also important isolated drawings for a prairie house, Midway Gardens, the Johnson Administration… Read More
On the Street
14 June 2024
On the Street14 June 2024
The Drawing Matter editors have been enjoying Eddie Heathcote’s On the Street: In-Between Architecture and wanted to share the following short extracts. Draining Against the wall under the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome is a strange object, looking a little like a pancake with… Read More
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein
29 May 2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29 May 2024
This text by Matt Page will be included in the exhibition catalogue for Begin again. Fail Better: Preliminary drawings in architecture (and art). The exhibition opens on the 31st May 2024 at the Kunstmuseum Olten, and includes nearly 100 drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. More information about the exhibition… Read More
Notes from Rome
23 May 2024
Notes from Rome23 May 2024
– Anna Kostreva and Diane Lewis
The following text first appeared in Conceiving the Plan: Nuance and Intimacy in Civic Space, ed. by Yael Hameiri Sainsaux (Milano: Skira editore, 2022), 192-195. Edited and transcribed by Anna Kostreva. In 1977, Diane Lewis had just graduated from The Cooper Union and was honored with a fellowship at the… Read More
Hermann Czech: Approximate Line of Action
9 May 2024
Hermann Czech: Approximate Line of Action9 May 2024
Hermann Czech: Ungefähre Hauptrichtung (Approximate Line of Action) is on show at Fanz-Josef-Kai 3, Vienna, from 16 March – 9 June, 2024. On 15 March 2024, an exhibition on the Austrian architect Hermann Czech’s work opened in Vienna at the exhibition space Franz-Josefs-Kai 3 (fJk3). It is the first retrospective… Read More
Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives (2023) — Review
8 March 2024
Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives (2023) — Review8 March 2024
Geoffrey Bawa, the Sri Lankan architect who died in 2003 at 83 years old in his native Columbo, has been justly celebrated for the skill with which he integrated modern architectural forms and materials into the landscapes and built environment of Sri Lanka and Bali. Although he was often labelled… Read More
Where to Find a Drawing of a Swiss Gold Vault
28 February 2024
Where to Find a Drawing of a Swiss Gold Vault28 February 2024
If you really want to hear about where to find the mountain vaults of Swiss banks, and what they look like, the first thing you should probably know is that the archives vigilantly kept by almost all banks in Switzerland are not publicly accessible—and even when they are, the last thing… Read More
Reality Modeled After Images: Architecture and Aesthetics after the Digital Image (2022) — Review
24 February 2024
Reality Modeled After Images: Architecture and Aesthetics after the Digital Image (2022) — Review24 February 2024
In Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers Sociologist David Turnbull reflects on the way technologies of drawing shape thought and action.[1] Cathedrals got built prior to international agreement on common units of measure, often without agreed plans, and without those people we now call architects. What scope for improvisation did individual masons… Read More
Ludwig Wittgenstein (and Gustav III of Sweden), designing gardens
15 February 2024
Ludwig Wittgenstein (and Gustav III of Sweden), designing gardens15 February 2024
In the following extract, from his book Cambridge College Gardens, Tim Richardson describes the incident that made philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein sketch out his ideas for an alternative garden design at Trinity College in Cambridge, alongside a letter Wittgenstein wrote to the College Garden Committee objecting to the plans for their… Read More
Simon Fraser University
1 February 2024
Simon Fraser University1 February 2024
This text is an excerpt from Arthur Erickson on Learning Systems, co-published by Concordia University Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture where the Arthur Erickson Archive is held. The text is reproduced with the kind permission of the Estate of Arthur Erickson. Recalling distant events is not easy, but those years two… Read More
Visualizing the Renaissance Worksite and the problems of graphic translation
17 January 2024
Visualizing the Renaissance Worksite and the problems of graphic translation 17 January 2024
– Jarne Geenens and Elizabeth Merrill
Francesco di Giorgio’s autograph manuscript of machine design, the Opusculum de architectura is among the most enigmatic records of early modern architecture.[1] Dedicated to Duke Federico da Montefeltro, the compact vellum manuscript celebrates the art and ingenuity of technical design, while simultaneously capturing the energy and ambition of the fabled… Read More
Alberto Ponis, The London Years
14 December 2023
Alberto Ponis, The London Years14 December 2023
I am leafing through a neat hundred-page sketchbook with notes, the text enlivened with pencil, charcoal, and pen sketches with varied annotations, including asterisks and underlining in colour crayon, brought into order with careful lists and occasional full pages on practical matters such as delivering a lecture or taking architectural… Read More
The Renewal of Dwelling (2023) – Review
13 November 2023
The Renewal of Dwelling (2023) – Review13 November 2023
Dwelling is on the political and architectural agenda of every European country in response to the rise of private housing development investment which has dominated the free market in the last decades, transforming cities and creating a new form of housing crisis. The Renewal of Dwelling. European Housing Construction 1945-75… Read More
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzky as Architect
2 September 2024
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzky as Architect2 September 2024
– Richard Anderson and Markus Lähteenmäki
It was in a room without windows and walls of bare concrete, in the basement of one of the ETH buildings on its suburban campus in Hönggerberg Zürich, where I first heard about this book project from its author. Not another book on El Lissitzky, I remember thinking, when he… Read More
theoretical & imaginary urban form presentation