Period: c20th

Tomas Schmit: Two New Ways to Draw a Circle

Tomas Schmit: Two New Ways to Draw a Circle

Editors, Berit Schuck and Barbara Wien

In 1971, the artist Tomas Schmit was commissioned to design the cover for Instant Composers Pool 010, an experimental jazz album featuring performances by Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg recorded live at the Stedelijk Museum. It was Schmit’s first album cover—he subsequently designed two others for the Berlin jazz label… Read More

Protected: On the Open Hand atop Bhakra Nangal Dam

Protected: On the Open Hand atop Bhakra Nangal Dam

Vikramaditya Prakash

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Drawings of Architectures

Drawings of Architectures

Primitivo González and Niall Hobhouse

The exhibition Drawings of Architectures brings together Primitivo González’s private collection of original architectural drawings, sketches and notes, which González has been collecting for more than twenty-five years. The exhibition, designed by Ara, Noa and Primitivo González, includes drawings from Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Rafael Moneo, and Emilio Tuñón, among others, and is presented at the Patio Herreriano Museum in… Read More

Protected: The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

Protected: The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Sin Centre: Sheen and Transparent Overlays

Sin Centre: Sheen and Transparent Overlays

Nat Chard and Michael Webb

Following a lively debate at Drawing Matter about the surface and support of Michael Webb’s isometric drawing of a car ramp, Nat Chard thought to ask Michael himself how he made it. Dear all, On Monday we had a conversation about one of Mike Webb’s Sin Centre drawings that had a print-like… Read More

In Palau, Sardinia, on the East Coast

In Palau, Sardinia, on the East Coast

Gio Ponti

Anyone who has seen and contemplated certain beautiful and simple ancient Mediterranean houses, such as those found in Greece, Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, knows that modern examples rarely possess the wisdom and beauty of these anonymous, traditional dwellings.  Wisdom, above all: the thickness of the walls, for coolness and… Read More

DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling

DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling

Gabriel Hernández

The work of Team 4 Architects (1963–1967) and Norman and Wendy Foster’s continuation as Foster Associates (1967–1992) is typically examined through their built projects rather than through their extensive drawing repertoire and its imaginative potential. This article unpacks the narrative strategies employed by the two British practices, focusing on the… Read More

Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati at Drawing Matter

Andrea Branzi & Archizoom Associati at Drawing Matter

Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Francesco Fiammenghi

To probe the long and multifaceted career of Andrea Branzi (1938–2023), one must first turn to his formative years at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence in the early 1960s. At the time, the Florence School became the incubator of several of Italy’s postwar avant-garde groups, including… Read More

Lucien Hervé: A Photographer with Scissors

Lucien Hervé: A Photographer with Scissors

Lucien Hervé

We are thankful to Ross Anderson, who identified these statements Lucien Hervé made when interviewed by Hans Ulrich Olbrist, and which are pertinent to this contact sheet in the Drawing Matter Collection: ‘When Le Corbusier received me in his office one day, we talked for a long time; I remember that he… Read More

Reason for Drawings 

Reason for Drawings 

Samantha Hardingham

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a certain drawing did NOT exist? I am forever grateful to Cedric Price for doing this drawing. If he had not done it, my job of devising a way to order and organise materials for what became Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: a forward-minded retrospective (AA/CCA,… Read More

Protected: The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards

Protected: The Ingredients of the Pudding: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Christmas Cards

Ana Abalos Ramos

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Le Corbusier, Album Punjab, 1951

Le Corbusier, Album Punjab, 1951

Maristella Casciato

The following text first appeared in Maristella Casciato, Le Corbusier Album Punjab, 1951 (Zurich: Lars Müller Publications, 2024), 17–21. * Le Corbusier embarked on his first visit to the Indian state of Punjab in 1951 in anticipation of the planning and construction of Chandigarh. Included in his luggage was a notebook, which he… Read More

John Hejduk: Means, Ends

John Hejduk: Means, Ends

Anton Bucich

Peter Eisenman was wrong… It is architecture, even if you can’t ‘get in it.’[1] But he was also right… ‘The tradition of the architect-writer is well precedented in the history of architecture.’[2] It might remain a question without an answer, though it is curious that on large, the once hyphenated… Read More

Protected: Zaha Hadid at Drawing Matter

Protected: Zaha Hadid at Drawing Matter

Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt

Ulrich Rückriem’s Anröchter Dolomit Projekt

Matt Page

A drawing for?A drawing of?Before?After?An explanation?An idea?An instruction?Precise?Approximate?Careful?Loose?For the artist?For us?For sale? A seemingly quiet drawing raises many questions. Ulrich Rückriem splits, saws and breaks stone. It is a process that defies determination through drawing—or perhaps one that is itself drawing. How can an idea be drawn for a material… Read More

Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City

Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City

John Pudney

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Bernat Klein Studio

Bernat Klein Studio

Neil Gillespie

Travelling north through the Borders over the years, regardless of route, a diversion along a twisting country road north of Selkirk was always on the cards. Navigating a dangerous bend in the road, no time to stop, was rewarded by a fleeting glimpse of an enigmatic presence amongst the trees.… Read More

Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives

Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives

Marco Moro

The following text is a partially revised version of that delivered and published in ‘Stoà Open Seminar. Emerging perspectives on teaching and research in architectural design’ (May 2024). It has since become the conceptual framework for a series of seminars held on the same subject at the School of Architecture… Read More

Protected: Teatro del Mondo

Protected: Teatro del Mondo

Vincenzo Moschetti

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Tolerance

Tolerance

Tom Emerson

Too many people have talked about how profoundly the production of architecture has changed in the wake of the digital revolution. Far fewer have noted how architecture has resisted the seductive flourishes of digital production and maintained a dogged continuity with social and historical space. Bricks remain bricky even when… Read More

In the Archive: Maristella Casciato

In the Archive: Maristella Casciato

Maristella Casciato

From April to July, Maristella Casciato was Drawing Matter’s Visiting Scholar—our first in London. During her time in the archive, she made new discoveries and started many stimulating conversations. Among other things, she closely studied Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Punjab Grille Capitol album, translated a selection of Gio Ponti’s illustrated letters,… Read More

Carlos Diniz: London 2025

Carlos Diniz: London 2025

Editors

‘As a piece of urban design [it] is simply abysmal. A wonderful opportunity to create a new place in London with innovative urban forms has been missed… The layout is simplistic and banal, the architecture lumpy and mediocre—the whole looks like a chunk of some ageing, tired and dreary US… Read More

Orgonic Architecture

Orgonic Architecture

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

A face is drawn over a torso; breasts are transformed into eyes with nipples as pupils, the nose curves along the edge of the ribcage, and the belly button is the pursed smoking and kissing mouth, above hangs a necklace made of spherical beads, acting like a curled fringe. The… Read More

DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge

DMJ – Riddle as Method, Transparency at Play: Aldo Van Eyck at Baambrugge

Laura Harty

As work on site at the Orphanage (1956-1960) neared completion, Aldo van Eyck was busy exploring and expanding the reach of his ideas through a number of interlaced and mutually generative projects, editorial of Forum magazine (1959-63), contributions to the reorganisation and ultimate dissolution of CIAM (1954-1960) and the design of a… Read More