1329 texts about architecture in drawings, models and photography.
792 writers on
890 architects.
If you are interested in contributing a text, please read the Guide for submissions and submit a proposal to the editors.
Basil Spence: Houses of Parliament
29.01.2020
Basil Spence: Houses of Parliament29.01.2020
Basil Spence (1907–1976), study sketch for the enlargement of the Houses of Parliament, London: elevation, 1969. Pencil on paper, 245 × 480 mm. DMC 1104r. Basil Spence (1907–1976), study sketch…
Battersea Redevelopment
22.01.2020
Battersea Redevelopment22.01.2020
In Bat-Hat, our project for Battersea Power Station, we have divested the existing building of all that froze the immediate site, leaving only that which is considered important – its…
Origins in Translation
20.01.2020
Origins in Translation20.01.2020
Broken bits of ancient architecture piled up in the foreground of a printed page is a topos in the canon of architectural publications. An early example takes place in the frontispiece of…
Marie-José Van Hee: Drawn Closer
02.01.2020
Marie-José Van Hee: Drawn Closer02.01.2020
Marie-José Van Hee (1950), House Van Hee, 1990–1993. Graphite on tracing paper. Courtesy the architect. Towards the end of my architectural studies in the late 1960s I moved into a…
Other Lives: Charles Eisen and Laugier’s Essai sur l’Architecture
26.12.2019
Other Lives: Charles Eisen and Laugier’s Essai sur l’Architecture26.12.2019
One of the best-known drawings related to the discipline is the ‘allegory of architecture’, drawn by Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen and engraved by Jean-Jacques Aliamet. [1] The original is now in the collection of…
From a Little Below and to the Right
17.12.2019
From a Little Below and to the Right17.12.2019
Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944), Elevation, perspective, section of moulding, 1915. Pencil and blue crayon on tracing, folded and overlaid. DMC 3197.8. There is a characteristic recurrence in Lutyens’ drawings of a…
Postcard from Nowhere (Counterswimming)
08.04.2020
Postcard from Nowhere (Counterswimming)08.04.2020
Madelon Vriesendorp (1945), Medusa Raft, Trial proof, 1978. Screenprint. DMC 3000.11. Sixteen swim in synchrony. Bright red trunks, blue swim caps, in a perfectly choreographed 4 x 4 grid of…
Haiku
28.04.2020
One Thing Leads to Another
23.04.2020
One Thing Leads to Another23.04.2020
Architecture rarely results from a singular eureka moment or a spontaneous act of genius. The myth of the napkin sketch is precisely a myth. The lucidity it suggests is essential,…
L’Invasion de la Viande (1980)
14.05.2020
L’Invasion de la Viande (1980)14.05.2020
Jean Criton (1930), Mounument pour un Rosbeef, c.1968–1969. Pen, ink and coloured chalks on buff paper, 321 × 251 mm. DMC 2054. As part of an imagined intervention in the…
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer
11.06.2020
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer11.06.2020
Cover of ‘Caderno 1’, dated March 1977. This text was originally published in Architecture through Drawing. Drawn Closer is a year-long collaboration between Domus and Drawing Matter, edited by Sarah…
Welfare Palace Hotel (1978)
04.06.2020
Welfare Palace Hotel (1978)04.06.2020
Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vriesendorp, Welfare Palace Hotel, Sunken Medusa Raft, 1975–1976. Gouache and acrylic on paper, 780 × 1140 mm. DMC 3000.1. In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s…
Michael Graves’ Rooftop Village (1985)
01.06.2020
Michael Graves’ Rooftop Village (1985)01.06.2020
Michael Graves (1934–2015), Sketch designs, Portland, Oregon, USA, 1980. Pencil and colour crayon on yellow tracing paper, 255 × 290 mm. DMC 1800. A notable aspect of the early criticism…
Working with Asplund
29.05.2020
Working with Asplund29.05.2020
Asplund’s office was two floors up in an old building in Regeringsgatan, behind the NK department store. There were civil engineers there and Asplund collaborated with them as well. They…
New Welfare Island (1978)
27.05.2020
New Welfare Island (1978)27.05.2020
OMA, Rem Koolhaas, Roosevelt Island, 1975. Acrylic and watercolour. DMC 3070. In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto for the island of Manhattan, the tacit logic of…
Gallaratese & Fagnano Olona (1976)
26.05.2020
Gallaratese & Fagnano Olona (1976)26.05.2020
Two fragments of texts paired with two fragments of process. Writing in the May 1976 issue of Architecture + Urbanism, Rossi reflects on two projects: the Gallaratese Housing Complex, Milan and…
Eisenman: House VI (1985)
21.05.2020
Eisenman: House VI (1985)21.05.2020
Peter Eisenman (1932), House VI: colour axonometric, 1972. Black ink, coloured ink, and adhesive vinyl on mylar, 609 × 609 mm. DMC 1280. The design of House VI was partly…
On William Kent (1771)
19.05.2020
On William Kent (1771)19.05.2020
William Kent (1685–1748), Sketch view of Windsor Castle, Windsor, England, 1740. Pen and black ink with wash on laid paper, 201 × 324 mm. DMC 1676. Here is Walpole’s famous…
Hotel Sphinx (1978)
18.05.2020
Hotel Sphinx (1978)18.05.2020
Elia Zenghelis, OMA, elevation, Hotel Sphinx, Times Square, New York, 1975. Pencil and ink on tracing, 296 × 210 mm. DMC 3150. In the appendix to Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas’s…
Ink on his Hands: Montano’s Visceral Roman Architectures
18.05.2020
Ink on his Hands: Montano’s Visceral Roman Architectures18.05.2020
Giovanni Battista Montano (1534–1621), leaf from an eight-page album (detail), c.1590–1610. Brown ink and brown wash, 245 × 143 mm. DMC 1542.4. When he sat down to make the drawings…
Wright & Lautner: The Divorce
12.05.2020
Wright & Lautner: The Divorce12.05.2020
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), drawing for the ‘Eaglefeather’ estate for Arch Oboler in the Santa Monica Mountains, 1940. Graphite pencil and colour pencil on tracing paper, 599 × 900 mm….
Daria’s Aria
23.04.2020
Daria’s Aria23.04.2020
Giò Ponti (1891–1979), draft layout for Aria d’Italia VIII: espressione di Gio Ponti (detail), c.1954. Print, pencil, pen, watercolour, gouache and collage on prepared printed paper. Between 1939 and 1941…
Behind the Lines 14
03.02.2020
Behind the Lines 1403.02.2020
– Philippa Lewis
These are just insignificant sketches, but they remind me of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques in 1937; by night it was a unique experience – mémorable. René-André Coulon (1908–1997), Projet…
topographic/cartographic presentation civic & municipal public space behind the lines (series) creative writing DMC