Period: c19th
Cartographies of the Imagination
4 June 2021
Cartographies of the Imagination4 June 2021
By Kirsty Badenoch and Sayan Skandarajah
Drawing place is illusory. Maps may begin as transcriptions of a worldly order – a semblance of truth and objectivity – but in doing so, become acts of world-building that both belong to and are entirely removed from their starting point. In 2019, we first visited Shatwell Farm in the… Read More
Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis
27 May 2021
Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis27 May 2021
This study of Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis was made by Pascal Coste (b. 1787 Marseille, France) in 1840 as part of an archeological survey of the Persian City of Persepolis. Through a combination of plan and perspective, Coste portrayed the symmetrical arrangement and elaborate construction of the ancient… Read More
Keshi Ghat
13 May 2021
Keshi Ghat13 May 2021
Seeing is a reaching out, a kind of metaphorical touching that involves one’s whole being and is reciprocal. Amita Singh If you hadn’t read the title of the drawing, you would have probably guessed that this would have been a riverfront mosque in India. I did too. The courtyards reminding… Read More
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review
4 May 2021
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review4 May 2021
By Stan Allen
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
14 Wine Street, Bristol
29 April 2021
14 Wine Street, Bristol29 April 2021
By Lee Marable
Whilst leafing through the Drawing Matter collection, this drawing from 1885, by architect Henry Crisp, caught my eye. The drawing depicts a new shopfront and facade to be grafted on to the existing structure of 14 Wine Street, Bristol. Initially, the design struck me as remarkably contemporary and I came… Read More
The Beaux-Arts Tradition
29 April 2021
The Beaux-Arts Tradition29 April 2021
By Basile Baudez and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger
The following text has been excerpted from Living with Architecture as Art, the recently published catalogue of Peter May’s collection of drawings, models and architectural artefacts. The catalogue is edited by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger and published in two generously illustrated volumes. The first volume includes essays by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Basile Baudez,… Read More
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics
12 April 2021
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics12 April 2021
By Tom Cookson
It is the unique trait of the section drawing to fragment the singularity of built form, to allow the reading of a building as a series of individual pieces, and thereby delay our innate predilection – at least momentarily – for gestalt. Much like an erratic (in geology, an erratic is a material… Read More
Balzac architecte (1856)
9 April 2021
Balzac architecte (1856)9 April 2021
By Leon Gozlan
No drawing, nor stone in the ground, remains of the dream house near Paris which the young novelist was never able to complete. By the time Balzac resold the whole property in 1840, with debts of 100,000 francs, it had collapsed back into the landscape, together with the terraced plantations… Read More
Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)
6 April 2021
Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)6 April 2021
By George Eliot
This speech on building- and on architects- was made by Adam, to Mr Poyser, and comes in Chapter 49 of the novel. It was pointed out to us by the Eliot scholar, Dermot Coleman, who added that ‘it is generally a safe bet that views on such matters expressed by Adam… Read More
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy
9 February 2021
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy9 February 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,… Read More
The Architect and the Matador
8 February 2021
The Architect and the Matador8 February 2021
By Thomas Gould
On one sheet, a matador;on the other, a design,with measurements, for a cathedral pier. What unites these drawingsis provenance:both, apparently, executedby the architectEugène Viollet-le-Ducin meetings. As Viollet-le-Duc’s mind wanderedfrom doodle to design,my attention,beholding the drawings,is drawn between the two sheets; drawn, by the insistently connective impulseof looking,into associations. Between architect… Read More
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House
25 July 2021
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House25 July 2021
By Marie-Henriette Desmoures
I find myself lost in the woods, then reorientated, guided by the centralised chimney. Standing dead centre in front of the gate lodge, my gaze is lifted to the space between chimney and sky, between foreground or background. A cloud of white smoke disguises itself as an English cloud, passing… Read More
elevation theoretical & imaginary drawing matter writing prize 2020