Period: c20th
Mark Fisher: The Wall for Pink Floyd
30.10.2026
Mark Fisher: The Wall for Pink Floyd30.10.2026
– Editors
Drawing Matter is excited to have recently acquired a drawing by Mark Fisher showing the backstage design for Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ concert at Earl’s Court. The concert was first performed in 1980 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena and was toured to Nassau Coliseum (Long Island), and Earl’s Court… Read More
Collection Guide: OMA
23.10.2026
Collection Guide: OMA23.10.2026
OMA, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, was officially founded on 1 January 1975 ‘to develop a mutant form of Urbanism – new types of architectural scenarios that will result in the rehabilitation of the metropolitan lifestyle.’ Its founding partners were two architect-artist couples: Elia Zenghelis (1937–2026) and Zoe Zenghelis (b.1938),… Read More
On Travel (Videos)
22.10.2026
On Travel (Videos)22.10.2026
These videos, filmed in the space of the archive, are part of an ongoing series at Drawing Matter, where we ask scholars and practitioners to look closely at and comment on particular drawings, sketchbooks, and artefacts in the collection. Find more from the series here. * Matthew Wells teaches architectural history… Read More
Hatching Memories
19.10.2026
Hatching Memories19.10.2026
Jeremy Peacock’s revelations (Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine) touched a nerve with this retired designer with a memory of my own early encounter with this now legendary piece of equipment (to my generation at least). In my case, leaving the RCA and joining Colquhoun & Miller in late… Read More
Thalia & Melpomene
16.10.2026
Thalia & Melpomene16.10.2026
It floats: Amid the haze, like a game or a dream, over an invented geography, toward the Grand Canal, the Po, the Paraná. Il Teatro del Mondo sways to nature’s rhythm.[1] Square in plan, it recalls both the Venetian carnivals and Shakespeare’s Globe. An entrance door on each side and vaporetti in the… Read More
DMJ – Where to Find a Drawing of a Swiss Gold Vault
12.10.2026
DMJ – Where to Find a Drawing of a Swiss Gold Vault12.10.2026
If you really want to learn where to find the mountain vaults of Swiss banks, and what they look like, the first thing you should know is that the archives vigilantly kept by almost all banks in Switzerland are not publicly accessible – and even when they are, the last… Read More
Freddie Phillipson: The Ulysses Project (Video)
01.10.2026
Freddie Phillipson: The Ulysses Project (Video)01.10.2026
On Bloomsday 2026—the single day on which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place—Freddie Phillipson presented and discussed drawings of Dublin as experienced in the novel, taken from his twenty-year exploration of Joyce’s landmark text. During the evening, Phillipson’s working and finished drawings were displayed in the Drawing Matter archive and he read from the… Read More
Building a Site: Between Tradition and Modernity – Asplund’s Summerhouse in Stennäs
21.09.2026
Building a Site: Between Tradition and Modernity – Asplund’s Summerhouse in Stennäs21.09.2026
In 1936, four years before his death, Erik Gunnar Asplund designed his own house on a site with unique characteristics, irregular topography, and rocky outcrops. Known as the summerhouse in Stennäs, it remains a timeless architectural case study. The house embodies an architectural idea, a distinct approach to the tenets… Read More
An Interview with David Connor
18.09.2026
An Interview with David Connor18.09.2026
– Gianni Botsford and David Connor
* Gianni Botsford (GB): What I said that I could talk to you about is where it all started for you, how you learned to draw, where your drawing method came from, and how it developed over time. David Connor (DC): I did start to draw when I was 4 or 5, which would… Read More
The Indeterminate Building: Grimshaw’s ‘Action Factory’ for Herman Miller
15.09.2026
The Indeterminate Building: Grimshaw’s ‘Action Factory’ for Herman Miller15.09.2026
In 1975, following a closed competition during which Norman Foster and James Stirling were also approached, the Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership were invited to design a new factory for the American furniture company Herman Miller. Five years earlier, the company had set up a salesroom and workshop in Bath in the former… Read More
The Analogous City: Panel
04.09.2026
The Analogous City: Panel04.09.2026
Having been asked to write about the panel exhibited at the Venice Biennale—entitled The analogous city, a joint work carried out with my friends Eraldo Consolascio, Bruno Reichlin and Fabio Reinhart—it is worthwhile, I feel, posing a few general questions that arise prior to experiments or results of this kind.… Read More
Franco Purini: Drawings of Imagination
03.09.2026
Franco Purini: Drawings of Imagination03.09.2026
‘The drawing represents the medianic exploration of the shaded side of reason and, contradictorily, the scene of an ideal landscape in which the architect believes he will be happy. As the place of theoretical truth, the drawing institutes itself independently of architecture. Superior to architecture by the fact that it… Read More
Reading Las Vegas: An Oral History of Drawing
02.09.2026
Reading Las Vegas: An Oral History of Drawing02.09.2026
– Denise Scott Brown and Ariel Koltun-Fromm
The following interview is excerpted from a longer conversation between Ariel Koltun-Fromm and Denise Scott Brown which took place in April 2024 at her home in Philadelphia. It is part of a larger research project by Ariel investigating drawing as a means of interrogating existing places. * Ariel Koltun-Fromm (AKF):… Read More
Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation
24.08.2026
Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation24.08.2026
– Michael Gold and Dalibor Vesely
The following text, ‘The Dialogue of Representation’ by Dalibor Vesely, was published in People in Architecture, the book featuring the exhibition of work by Michael Gold’s AA Unit 5 students held at the Architectural Association, 4–29 October 1983. Read a response to the exhibition by Peter Wilson here. Drawing Matter… Read More
A Palimpsest in Line: A Graphic Biography of the Hasselt Beguinage
21.08.2026
A Palimpsest in Line: A Graphic Biography of the Hasselt Beguinage21.08.2026
– Koenraad Van Cleempoel and Joshua Kempen
The revitalisation of the Hasselt Beguinage and its transformation into the Faculty of Architecture and Arts has created an opportunity to reconsider the role of drawing as a critical mode of inquiry in adaptive reuse. Rather than treating drawing as a purely representational tool, the project frames it as an… Read More
BOLLES+WILSON: Drawing Towards Building (Exhibition + Talk)
14.08.2026
BOLLES+WILSON: Drawing Towards Building (Exhibition + Talk)14.08.2026
– Editors
On Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July, Drawing Matter presented an exhibition of drawings by BOLLES+WILSON (founded in London in 1980; based in Münster since 1988). The exhibition was the fourth in a series presenting the work of architects and practices that are represented in the Drawing Matter Collection by significant portfolios… Read More
On Tony Fretton’s Sketchbook, 1981 (Video)
17.07.2026
On Tony Fretton’s Sketchbook, 1981 (Video) 17.07.2026
Tony Fretton’s earliest sketchbooks contained within the collection at Drawing Matter are not records of projects developing page by page. They are stranger and more useful than that. Notes, sketches, references, lists, details, business, fragments of furniture and architecture sit beside one another without much concern for order. For an… Read More
The Visual Origins of Circulation in Architecture
09.07.2026
The Visual Origins of Circulation in Architecture09.07.2026
Amidst the architecture historians, the comparison between the plan of Borromini’s church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and that of one of Bramante’s four pillars supporting the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is well-known. Though I could not find the name of the historian who conceived it, it definitely… Read More
Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings
29.06.2026
Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings29.06.2026
– Editors
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Blow Up: Dante Bini and His House for a Film Director
25.06.2026
Blow Up: Dante Bini and His House for a Film Director25.06.2026
On July 4th, 1964, in Crespellano on the outskirts of Bologna, Italian architect Dante Bini successfully constructed (in less than three hours) a 12m diameter, 6m high, hemispherical reinforced concrete shell structure using the unique pneumatic formwork of a giant balloon. As a student, Dante Bini had studied and admired… Read More
Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON
22.06.2026
Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON22.06.2026
– Editors
Peter Wilson and Julia Bolles are the founding partners of Architekturbüro BOLLES+WILSON. Peter Wilson was born in Australia, he studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the Architectural Association, where he later taught from 1974–1988 (Diploma Unit Master 1980–88). Julia Bolles was born in Münster and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of… Read More
The Primacy of Drawing
15.06.2026
The Primacy of Drawing15.06.2026
The Primacy of Drawing, Deanna Petherbridge’s magisterial survey of the place of drawing in European art since the Renaissance, was first published by Yale University Press in 2010. Weighing in at 520 pages, it was a formidable achievement of vast erudition and profound insight, the fruits of more than two… Read More
Peter Eisenman, Leslie Martin, and the Question of ‘Generic Forms’
29.10.2026
Peter Eisenman, Leslie Martin, and the Question of ‘Generic Forms’29.10.2026
– Richard Hill
This is a revised version of a talk given at the symposium ‘Architecture at Cambridge, The Martin Years, 1956-73’, held at the Cambridge University School of Architecture in November 2025. Leslie Martin was professor of architecture from 1956 to 1972. * Peter Eisenman arrived in Cambridge in 1960, on James… Read More
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