Period: c20th
Le Corbusier at Drawing Matter
26.06.2025
Le Corbusier at Drawing Matter26.06.2025
– Maristella Casciato and Nicholas Olsberg
Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887-1865) trained in the fine and decorative arts before undertaking travels and varied apprenticeships to develop his architectural skills, opening a studio and teaching practice in La Chaux in 1912, and moving to Paris in 1917 to work principally as a… Read More
Trevor Dannatt’s Riyadh Mosque: A Study in Sacred Space and Cultural Juxtaposition
23.06.2025
Trevor Dannatt’s Riyadh Mosque: A Study in Sacred Space and Cultural Juxtaposition23.06.2025
Saudi Arabia’s Quest for Modern Identity and the Urban Transformation of Riyadh Beginning in the 1960s, Saudi Arabia embarked on an ambitious building programme, resulting in numerous architectural projects recognised internationally for their remarkable scale as well as their innovative architectural and engineering solutions.[1] This extensive initiative gained substantial momentum from… Read More
AnnaRita Zalaffi: The Engineer at the Heart of Alberto Ponis’ Work
19.06.2025
AnnaRita Zalaffi: The Engineer at the Heart of Alberto Ponis’ Work19.06.2025
In April, Alex Pillen interviewed AnnaRita Zalaffi over the course of a day at her home in Palau, Sardinia. This text, which focuses on AnnaRita’s early life and her creative collaboration with her husband and professional partner Alberto Ponis, is published to coincide with the exhibition ‘The Crystal and the… Read More
From the Poetics of Reality to the Poetics of Memory
16.06.2025
From the Poetics of Reality to the Poetics of Memory16.06.2025
Aldo Rossi’s conception of context underwent a significant transformation over the course of his architectural career, shifting from an emphasis on place to a preoccupation with memory.[1] This evolution is most discernible in his drawings. A comparative close reading of two works—an untitled drawing from 1950 and Composizione con S. Carlo–Città e Monumenti from 1970—reveals… Read More
The Craft of Carpentry: Drawing Life from Japan’s Forests
12.06.2025
The Craft of Carpentry: Drawing Life from Japan’s Forests12.06.2025
The Craft of Carpentry exhibition at Japan House London is striking for showing an ongoing craft tradition and architectural culture that appears to be both attuned to history and inherently adaptable. A fellow visitor to the exhibition told me about his father who had been a sukiya carpenter, building their… Read More
We are the Power: Posters from Paris, May 68
23.05.2025
We are the Power: Posters from Paris, May 6823.05.2025
Against Pairing Drawing Matter generously responded to my request to loan two items from their collection to be used as realia in an exhibition of May 1968 posters at Tank Magazine’s showroom on Great Portland Street. The items (DMC 2465 and 2302) are both lithographs in black and red, and… Read More
N.B. These Drawings Were From Memory
19.05.2025
N.B. These Drawings Were From Memory19.05.2025
After entering Smart’s Place, and climbing the steep staircase of treads (that become increasingly high and shallow until all the tension in my body was focused on my toes gripping and my weight not leaning back*), I arrived at the space of Drawing Matter where Rosie had indiscriminately laid out… Read More
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
Introduction A steady trickle of works on Dom Hans Van der Laan has appeared in the years since his passing in 1991. Most important among these, Richard Padovan has presented a compelling argument for the significance of Van der Laan’s theory of proportion through a series of texts, including Dom… Read More
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at Drawing Matter
13.05.2025
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at Drawing Matter13.05.2025
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The drawings archive held by Mies at the time of his death was placed in the Museum of Modern Art, and his correspondence and papers at the Library of Congress. They constitute a comprehensive record of his works after the opening of his practice in the United States, especially for… Read More
Fine Art and Commercial Architecture
08.05.2025
Fine Art and Commercial Architecture08.05.2025
Architects are touchy about whether they are making art or not. At a conference in Santa Monica several years ago Cesar Pelli was very concerned that his architecture be considered art. This is an ambiguity of European usage. As one of ‘the arts,’ architecture is an art. Visual art is… Read More
Jean Tinguely: La Vittoria
02.05.2025
Jean Tinguely: La Vittoria02.05.2025
– Editors
In 1970 Pierre Restany and Guido Le Noci, director of the Apollinaire gallery, decided to celebrate, with the help of the municipality of Milan, the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the Nouveaux Réalistes group. On 27 November, ten years after Yves Klein published his single-issue newspaper Le Dimanche 27… Read More
Protected: Sin Centre: Sheen and Transparent Overlays
01.05.2025
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove —The Study, Pot Plants & Pottery
01.05.2025
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove —The Study, Pot Plants & Pottery01.05.2025
Bringing the outside indoors, merging and blurring nature and culture, extending the garden into the study—such notions, a legacy of a generous North American sense of the landscape, from Fallingwater to the Case Study Houses, may have drifted into cliché but still, there is such glory to the actual open… Read More
Processing Process
25.04.2025
Processing Process25.04.2025
It is not Walter Gropius’ fault that his drawing for a single-family row house is strikingly dull. Even the towering figures of architecture, those revered creators of space and form, must, at times, strip their visions down to something much simpler. Clear, unadorned, almost utilitarian sketches become the necessary language… Read More
Exploding Art and Architecture: Zaha Hadid’s Irish Prime Minister’s Residence Sketchbook
17.04.2025
Exploding Art and Architecture: Zaha Hadid’s Irish Prime Minister’s Residence Sketchbook17.04.2025
Zaha Hadid’s sketchbook for the Irish Prime Minister’s Residence (1979-1980), held at the Zaha Hadid Foundation with corresponding works at Drawing Matter, has proved invaluable for understanding her early career development of ideas. The project marked Hadid’s first professional solo endeavour, and she established her own office around the same… Read More
Isou’s Bouleversement
14.04.2025
Isou’s Bouleversement14.04.2025
– Editors
Je pense que par la masse des définitions nouvelles et par la masse des secteurs inédits dévoilés, ce petit livre est le plus important ouvrage paru dans toute l’historie de l’architecture ou du moins le plus important ouvrage paru depuis plusieurs siécles en ce domaine. I believe that in terms… Read More
Les Fantasmes de l’origine: A Reverse Archaeology of the Désert de Retz
07.04.2025
Les Fantasmes de l’origine: A Reverse Archaeology of the Désert de Retz 07.04.2025
Last year, Francis Martinuzzi contacted Drawing Matter after seeing a reproduction of one of his drawings on our website. The drawing was from a project from the submission for his architectural diploma with Jean Faloux under the tutelage of Antoine Grumbach at Unité Pédagogiuqe no. 6 (L’École nationale supérieure d’architecture… Read More
Walter Marchetti: Observation of the Movements of a Fly
04.04.2025
In the Archive: Abattoirs, Boucheries, and Slaughterhouses
31.03.2025
In the Archive: Abattoirs, Boucheries, and Slaughterhouses31.03.2025
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. As architectural typologies, abattoirs, boucheries, and slaughterhouses embody the civilising of animal slaughter; serving as concrete expressions of the culture of animal consumption. Over time, the slaughterhouse has evolved in both its structures and perceptions, from a small-scale, craft-based operation rooted in necessity,… Read More
Curtains
28.03.2025
Curtains28.03.2025
– Petra Blaisse and Sophie Wehtje
Brief email exchanges. When meeting physically is out of the question, good old-fashioned correspondence still works, even if and for some time now, it is done electronically. This is how many of the editorial pieces on the Drawing Matter website come into being—through a chain of typed messages. It’s a… Read More
Leicester Engineering Building: Un-detailing
21.03.2025
Leicester Engineering Building: Un-detailing21.03.2025
The building is in many ways as extraordinary as its details. At ground-floor level it confronts the visitor with a blank wall of hard-faced red brick, which is occasionally pierced with a rather private-looking doorway, except at the point where the glazed main-entrance lobby splits this defensive podium into two… Read More
Studio Ponis: The Crystal and the Flame
02.07.2025
Studio Ponis: The Crystal and the Flame02.07.2025
– Irina Davidovici, Niall Hobhouse, Alex Pillen, Jonathan Sergison and Annarita Zalaffi
On Friday 20 June, Drawing Matter welcomed Annarita Zalaffi, Jonathan Sergison, Irina Davidovici, and Alex Pillen to the archive for a conversation about the work of Studio Ponis in Sardinia, and Alberto Ponis and Annarita Zalaffi’s working relationship. The conversation marked the opening of an exhibition of drawings from the… Read More
in the archive (project) DMC