Period: c19th
Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023) – Review
15 June 2023
Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023) – Review15 June 2023
Throughout this book, Matthew Wells sets his face against seeing architectural models as objects in themselves. His preoccupation is with their many uses and, therefore, meanings, which gives Modelling the Metropolis an originality but also an academic flavour which will appeal to some more than others. Though not a book… Read More
Through a Glass Darkly
6 June 2023
Through a Glass Darkly6 June 2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. Since Burckhardt’s discovery of Petra in 1812, Europeans and… Read More
Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop
2 May 2023
Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop2 May 2023
– Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh
This audio recording documents a workshop on architects’ drawings exploring the relationship between form, space and programme. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live… Read More
Protected: Collection News: Binazzi and UFO, Burton, Gounod, Siza, Visconti and more
13 March 2023
Protected: Collection News: Binazzi and UFO, Burton, Gounod, Siza, Visconti and more13 March 2023
– Editors
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
W. R. Lethaby: Apprenticeship and Education
13 January 2023
W. R. Lethaby: Apprenticeship and Education13 January 2023
This is the fourth text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. The building sites of London in the late nineteenth century desperately lacked adequate skills, and this need was being addressed neither on the job nor through appropriate training. The first prospectus of… Read More
The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part III
6 January 2023
The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part III6 January 2023
This is the final of three extracts, each a series of vignette studies; they are all taken from Kester Rattenbury’s fascinating full-length study: The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect, which approaches the great author from the perspective of his first career as a young architect in London and Dorset. As he… Read More
The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part II
21 December 2022
The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part II21 December 2022
This is the second of three extracts, each a series of vignette studies, that we will publish over the next few weeks; they are all taken from Kester Rattenbury’s fascinating full-length study: The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect, which approaches the great author from the perspective of his first career as… Read More
The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part I
12 December 2022
The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part I12 December 2022
This is the first of three extracts, each a series of vignette studies, that we will publish over the next few weeks; they are all taken from Kester Rattenbury’s fascinating full-length study: The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect, which approaches the great author from the perspective of his first career as… Read More
Gothic Sublime
1 December 2022
Gothic Sublime1 December 2022
For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More
W. R. Lethaby: The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople
28 November 2022
W. R. Lethaby: The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople28 November 2022
This is the third text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. William Lethaby’s second book, The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building, published in 1894, could hardly have started on its subject more emphatically, ‘Sancta Sophia is the most… Read More
W. R. Lethaby: The Builder’s Art and the Craftsman
24 October 2022
W. R. Lethaby: The Builder’s Art and the Craftsman24 October 2022
This is the second text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. Dissatisfied with his first book, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, a year later William Lethaby indicated a significant shift in thinking with the essay, ‘The Builder’s Art and the Craftsman’. The text… Read More
Stendhal’s Autobiography: La Vie de Henri Brulard
14 October 2022
Stendhal’s Autobiography: La Vie de Henri Brulard14 October 2022
Soft childish snow swirled on the sidewalk in New York. Lecture given, Christmas presents bought, two hours before the bus to Newark. Outside a bookstore a stall of paperbacks to clear, and there it is, the New York Review of Books’ paperback edition of La Vie du Henri Brulard, Stendhal’s autobiography of… Read More
In the Archive: Petit, Lebas, Fontaine, Le Corbusier and Kolář
4 October 2022
In the Archive: Petit, Lebas, Fontaine, Le Corbusier and Kolář4 October 2022
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. In this series, Drawing Matter invites visitors to write about material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that they have viewed as part of their research. In The Library at Night, Alberto Manguel likens a library to a human brain and… Read More
William Burges: Architectural drawing
25 August 2022
William Burges: Architectural drawing25 August 2022
– Editors
William Burges was elected to the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1860 and to its council in 1862. The text reproduced below is the transcript of the paper he delivered upon joining the RIBA. Reproduced from Transactions v.9-11(1858–1861), digitised by the University of Illinois, here.
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing
28 July 2022
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing28 July 2022
– Mark Dorrian and Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Drawing Matter is delighted to present three texts by Alberto Pérez-Gómez on architecture and its representation, the first writings by him to be carried on the Drawing Matter website. The first, ‘Architecture as Drawing’, is an early essay that initially appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education in 1982, a… Read More
Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review
25 July 2022
Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review25 July 2022
Anxious Objects At some point in the annals of Western scholarship it was judged that the past could be restituted not only from textual sources but also from objects, that the material of history was equally important as its written archive. This major shift in historical approach was largely brought… Read More
Materia 2: Corrugated Iron
14 July 2022
Materia 2: Corrugated Iron14 July 2022
This text is the second in a series by Gordon Shrigley titled ‘Materia’ in which the architect meditates on the physical and semiotic nature of a number of everyday construction products. Forthcoming texts will include thoughts on oxide-red paint, in-situ concrete, fired brick, plate glass and plastic. The first text… Read More
‘For the curiosity of the article’: Excerpts from Architectural Drawing (1870)
19 April 2022
‘For the curiosity of the article’: Excerpts from Architectural Drawing (1870)19 April 2022
The following introductory text and drawings are reproduced from William Burges’ Architectural Drawing (1870). Each of the drawings has been chosen for its graphic interest or for the content of Burges’ commentary – which covers the problems of surveying buildings, the limits of nineteenth-century book printing, and his personal curiosity in… Read More
The Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel
14 April 2022
The Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel14 April 2022
The plans of the Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel were drawn nearly two hundred years apart, and yet they both speak to the Ruskian timelessness of the ruin. The temple and chapel are representative of their respective ages, with the former alluding to Romanticism’s longing for a pastoral past free… Read More
Entering the Imperial Palace
16 March 2022
Entering the Imperial Palace16 March 2022
‘What a subject for John Martin!’ exclaimed a passer-by, as the hungry flames flickered up York Minster. Maybe they had in mind his apocalyptic painting The Fall of Nineveh, exhibited that same year at the Western Exchange on Old Bond Street and reproduced widely as a mezzotint print. Unbeknown to… Read More
The Edge of Architecture: Cornices in the Drawing Matter collection
21 February 2022
The Edge of Architecture: Cornices in the Drawing Matter collection21 February 2022
– Editors
The following group of drawings are presented here as additional illustrations to Maarten Delbeke’s essay The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture.
Hardman & Co.
9 June 2023
Hardman & Co.9 June 2023
– Sarah James
My interest in seeing the Hardman & Co. drawings at Drawing Matter was quite personally motivated as I feel a connection to the company. Partially, because I come from Birmingham where the company was based, and because I visited the studios informally in the 1980s with my parents. I was… Read More
religion interior ornament DMC detail furniture & object design