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.
Hans van der Laan’s Instruments of Thought: Proportion, Architecture, Analogy (2025)
16.05.2025
Hans van der Laan’s Instruments of Thought: Proportion, Architecture, Analogy (2025)16.05.2025
…Abbey St Benedcitusberg, Vaals, The Netherlands, c.1968. Print. © Van der Laan Archives, St-Benedictusberg Vaals. Perception Chapter 3 transitions into an argument for the practical value of Van der Laan’s…
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism
19.10.2022
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism19.10.2022
…advance, for no symbolic possibility – no pictures, artefacts, elements – outlasts it. Here perhaps is the final meaning of the casket as ark, archive, and archival destruction. This is a…
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 2
22.07.2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 222.07.2024
– Mark Dorrian and Peter Wilson
…MD: I presume that as a national library there are major archival functions to deal with? PW: There’s a huge archive—the whole thing is built around a five-level bombproof box…
Writing Prize 2021: Savinien Petit’s Chapelle a deux salles avec luminaire
18.10.2021
Writing Prize 2021: Savinien Petit’s Chapelle a deux salles avec luminaire18.10.2021
…Haque is an undergraduate architect at the Oxford School of Architecture. This text was selected as the winning entry in the Student Archive category of the Drawing Matter Writing Prize 2021….
Superstudio: Finding the Horizon
12.08.2021
Superstudio: Finding the Horizon12.08.2021
…fundamental. We relied on magazine illustrations, flicking for hours and hours through the image archive we had. Houses were a great help in finding the horizontal parallels that, converging on…
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House
28.07.2021
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House28.07.2021
…coals-to-Newcastle joke? Breuer’s Bi-Nuclear Plan reproduced in Peter Blake’s Marcel Breuer: Architect and Designer (1949); this copy belonged to James Gowan and is part of his archive at Drawing Matter….
Startha Éagsula: Steve Larkin Architects on Walter Pichler
12.11.2020
Startha Éagsula: Steve Larkin Architects on Walter Pichler12.11.2020
…the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available to purchase from Drawing Matter’s bookshop, here. Steve Larkin Architects, Walter Pichler’s pencil sketches, 2020. Friedrich Achleitner, when…
A Dose of Dosio
24.12.2019
A Dose of Dosio24.12.2019
…filigree pliability associated with its youth. This capacity to hide and to reveal complicates its designation in many archives as a secondary, ephemeral and notorious unstable medium. And so to…
R. Norman Shaw
11.03.2018
R. Norman Shaw11.03.2018
…31 letters from Shaw still preserved in the church’s archives is that rare piece of evidence, an architect’s first thoughts about his intentions. In January 1876 he wrote to F….
Hans Poelzig: Der Golem
11.03.2021
Hans Poelzig: Der Golem11.03.2021
…archive. Many gravitated towards the sketches of Álvaro Siza, however, I scurried towards the sketch above, excitement building with every step. Its effortless yet purposeful charcoal marks, a crescendo piece,…
Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction
08.07.2021
Leicester Engineering Building: Under Construction08.07.2021
…in the James Gowan archive, now part of the Drawing Matter Collection. The second post will be a companion to this one, and reproduces photographs of the completed Engineering Building;…
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material
21.04.2021
Peter Märkli: My Facade Material21.04.2021
– Editors
…untitled, 1977. Brass, edition 3/6, 300 × 100 × 70 mm. DMC 2976. Photographed on the wall of the Drawing Matter Archive, April 2021. Watch the full lecture below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2g5581w8Js…
Cedric Price: Urban Spaceman
22.03.2021
Cedric Price: Urban Spaceman22.03.2021
…violence in my twenty-one acres (…)’. [7] Robot doll shot, min 2:16, ‘London from the Air 1 (Fun Palace Outtakes), 1963; Joan Littlewood, 3 min, British Film Institute National Archive….
Álvaro Siza: The Adoration of the Magi
19.01.2022
Álvaro Siza: The Adoration of the Magi19.01.2022
…the latest placement of the columns at Shatwell. In a way, the pillars became allegorical visitors, permanently ador(n)ing the archive’s entrance and reconnecting it to the surrounding structures – lying…
Cedric Price: Westal Market Stall Prototypes
01.03.2021
Cedric Price: Westal Market Stall Prototypes01.03.2021
– Editors
https://vimeo.com/513916960 The way I remember it, a couple of years after the transfer of the ownership of the major part of the paper archive (over which I had been involved,…
Hello Iwona
27.01.2021
Hello Iwona27.01.2021
…in Drawing Matter’s online archive. No date, no caption. The greeting is enthusiastic enough to stop scrolling: ‘Hi there, James!!’ I think. But when I zoom in, it’s not him at…
Louis Le Vau: Château de Meudon
01.03.2018
Louis Le Vau: Château de Meudon01.03.2018
– Basile Baudez, Alexandre Cojannot and Alexandre Gady
…d’architecte au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 2017. This drawing by Le Vau is on loan to Dessiner pour Batir, on view at the Archives Nationales, Paris from 13 December 2017–12 March 2018….
Zahalternative Histories: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid
19.01.2021
Zahalternative Histories: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid19.01.2021
…O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Alternative Histories model. This commentary is the first in a series organised by the Irish Architectural Archive. The series, Startha Eagsula Insights, continues on the IAA’s website….
In Search of an Honest Map
22.02.2021
In Search of an Honest Map22.02.2021
…Arndt’s colour plan for the exterior of the Bauhaus Masters’ Houses in Dessau, [1] and in Hugh Strange Architects’ designs for the Drawing Matter archive. James Stirling, Michael Wilford and…
Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan
03.12.2020
Startha Éagsula: t o b Architect on James Gowan03.12.2020
…a companion catalogue to Alternative Histories (2019) and published to accompany the third installation of Alternative Histories at the Irish Architectural Archive. Startha Éagsula / Alternative Histories is now available…
Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter
13.12.2021
Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter13.12.2021
– Adrian Forty, Niall Hobhouse and Philippa Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN7scnCCJjo&t=344s This film was recorded in the Drawing Matter archive on the afternoon of Friday 28 November. It records a conversation between Philippa Lewis, Adrian Forty and Niall Hobhouse, about…
Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review
25.07.2022
Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review25.07.2022
…the material of history was equally important as its written archive. This major shift in historical approach was largely brought about by antiquarians, a fluid class of connoisseurs and collectors…
Room at the Top?: Kate Macintosh, Denise Scott Brown and the Kingmaker-critic
07.03.2022
Room at the Top?: Kate Macintosh, Denise Scott Brown and the Kingmaker-critic07.03.2022
– Emily Dan
…delightfully sarcastic letter: Kate Macintosh (1937), Letter, Dawson’s Heights, Southwark, London, 1973. AJ Journal Archive (1929-2005); May 9, 1973, 19; Art & Architecture Archive pg. 1093. All subsequent publications of…
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