Period: c20th
OMA: Big Competitions—Reorienting the Modern Project
29.08.2024
OMA: Big Competitions—Reorienting the Modern Project29.08.2024
This is the fourth post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
26.08.2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas26.08.2024
– Erin Besler, Marshall Brown, Sylvia Lavin and Michael Meredith
The small exhibition Fabric Object, curated by Michael Meredith and exhibited at the Princeton University School of Architecture between 7th March and 3rd May 2024, brought together seven projects from the early career of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects. Short texts written by the Princeton School of Architecture faculty: Stan… Read More
Resistance and the ‘Architecture of Pessimism’: John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate
05.08.2024
Resistance and the ‘Architecture of Pessimism’: John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate05.08.2024
Many people reach a point in their lives at which they realise that they should protest the status quo. Some people make the realisation but remain frustrated, stuck, or blocked from enacting the necessary change. How do we face, name, and act according to our most fundamental realisations and what… Read More
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Eclecticism and Unity of Language
31.07.2024
Luigi Moretti and Spazio: Eclecticism and Unity of Language31.07.2024
In the newfound spirit that emerged at the end of the Second World War, Rome became the epicentre of a cultural renaissance. In a context marked by the dynamic interplay between the innovative language of the modern avant-garde and the city’s artistic heritage, Luigi Moretti emerged as a key figure… Read More
In the Archive: New and Found 4
26.07.2024
In the Archive: New and Found 426.07.2024
– Editors
Click on drawings to move. The New and Found series is an informal miscellany, which allows us to show some recent acquisitions together with material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that you may not have seen before. New On the digital planchest this time is a collection… Read More
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
25.07.2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas25.07.2024
– Darell Wayne Fields, Anda French, Tessa Kelly, Paul Lewis and Michael Meredith
The small exhibition Fabric Object, curated by Michael Meredith and exhibited at the Princeton University School of Architecture between 7th March and 3rd May 2024, brought together seven projects from the early career of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects. Short texts written by the Princeton School of Architecture faculty: Stan… Read More
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 2
22.07.2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 222.07.2024
– Mark Dorrian and Peter Wilson
This is the second part of an edited transcript of a conversion held in Thurloe Sq, London, on 25 July 2020. Peter Wilson’s exhibition ‘Indian Summer and Thereafter’ had opened at Betts Project the previous evening. Mark Dorrian: Moving on to the Villa Auto and Clandeboye projects, both were sited… Read More
Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine
18.07.2024
Object of Desire — Haff Cross-Hatch Machine18.07.2024
Leaving the Architectural Association and starting at Ahrends Burton and Koralek (ABK) in 1978 was a complete revelation to me. Here, instead of the layers of smudged graphite used to illustrate abstract drawings—as promoted by Dalibor Vesely for instance—graphite powder from your rotary pencil sharpener was used to shade the… Read More
Watchful Solitude: John Hejduk and Venice
15.07.2024
Watchful Solitude: John Hejduk and Venice15.07.2024
The Thirteen Watchtowers of Cannaregio (with Waiting House) and House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate were conceived as an urban ensemble and laid the foundation for the later phase of John Hejduk’s work, which he described as an ‘architecture of pessimism’, and encompasses his best-known projects, such as… Read More
Relics of Electronic Hallucinations
11.07.2024
Relics of Electronic Hallucinations11.07.2024
During the 1950s and 1960s, the T-3 research group at the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Center produced the first drawings of what is now known as computational fluid dynamics. Using the prowess of early electronic computers—initially developed for the Manhattan Project, the T-3 lab, working under the auspices of the… Read More
Manufacturers Trust Bank
09.07.2024
Manufacturers Trust Bank09.07.2024
When one thinks of Manufacturers Trust Company and New York City architecture, the first image that comes to mind is Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill’s international style bank building on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street from 1954. By that year, SOM with Gordon Bunshaft as a design partner were the architects… Read More
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-1939
08.07.2024
Gavin Stamp: Interwar, British Architecture 1919-193908.07.2024
When the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner was asked to draw up an inventory of interwar buildings that deserved to be placed on the Statutory List, the so-called ‘Pevsner 50’ that resulted was almost entirely composed of the whitest of white modernist buildings. Similarly, John Summerson argued that the only thing… Read More
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade
28.06.2024
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade28.06.2024
This is the third post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
27.06.2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas27.06.2024
– Stan Allen, Beatriz Colomina, Michael Meredith, Jesse Reiser and Mark Wigley
The small exhibition Fabric Object, curated by Michael Meredith and exhibited at the Princeton University School of Architecture between 7th March and 3rd May 2024, brought together seven projects from the early career of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects. Short texts written by the Princeton School of Architecture faculty: Stan… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter
25.06.2024
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter25.06.2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The Frank Lloyd Wright collection is of primary interest from 1936 to 1951, and especially for a small group of studies and presentations for the shaping of domestic space, dwelling within landscape, and interior fittings. There are also important isolated drawings for a prairie house, Midway Gardens, the Johnson Administration… Read More
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 1
20.06.2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in Conversation – Part 120.06.2024
– Mark Dorrian and Peter Wilson
This is the first part of an edited transcript of a conversation held in Thurloe Sq, London, on 25 July 2020. Peter Wilson’s exhibition ‘Indian Summer and Thereafter’ had opened at Betts Project the previous evening. Mark Dorrian: What led you to architecture to begin with, Peter? You began studying… Read More
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto
10.06.2024
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto10.06.2024
The design of Casa a Diacceto responds to the principle of ‘discontinuity’ theorised by Lapo Binazzi at the beginning of the 1970s: architecture can only be thought of and realised in fragments and pieces, there is no longer a coherent unity. The pieces are never invented, but are taken from… Read More
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds
31.05.2024
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds31.05.2024
This is the second post, in a series of six, titled OMA CONVERSATIONS. The series is the result of a collaboration between Drawing Matter and architect Richard Hall who, over the past two years, has conducted twenty-three in-depth conversations with key collaborators working with OMA during its formative years. Drawing… Read More
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein
29.05.2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29.05.2024
This text by Matt Page will be included in the exhibition catalogue for Begin again. Fail Better: Preliminary drawings in architecture (and art). The exhibition opens on the 31st May 2024 at the Kunstmuseum Olten, and includes nearly 100 drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. More information about the exhibition… Read More
Notes from Rome
23.05.2024
Notes from Rome23.05.2024
– Anna Kostreva and Diane Lewis
The following text first appeared in Conceiving the Plan: Nuance and Intimacy in Civic Space, ed. by Yael Hameiri Sainsaux (Milano: Skira editore, 2022), 192-195. Edited and transcribed by Anna Kostreva. In 1977, Diane Lewis had just graduated from The Cooper Union and was honored with a fellowship at the… Read More
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs
22.05.2024
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs22.05.2024
‘Geometric, rigorously drawn, and yet always signed somewhere with an asymmetrical fold or knot.’[1] While this could be a concise description of Peter Wilson’s work, it is in fact Roland Barthes writing in his book Empire of Signs (1970) about what he described as the Japanese ‘ecstasy of the package’.[2] Barthes was struck by… Read More
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzky as Architect
02.09.2024
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzky as Architect02.09.2024
– Richard Anderson and Markus Lähteenmäki
It was in a room without windows and walls of bare concrete, in the basement of one of the ETH buildings on its suburban campus in Hönggerberg Zürich, where I first heard about this book project from its author. Not another book on El Lissitzky, I remember thinking, when he… Read More
presentation theoretical & imaginary urban form