Period: c20th
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade
28 June 2024
OMA: Rotterdam—Child’s Crusade28 June 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 June 2024
Fabric Object: Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas27 June 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 June 2024
Frank Lloyd Wright at Drawing Matter25 June 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
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto
10 June 2024
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto10 June 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 May 2024
OMA: Elia Zenghelis—Watersheds31 May 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 May 2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29 May 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 May 2024
Notes from Rome23 May 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 May 2024
Peter Wilson in the Empire of Signs22 May 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
O.M. Ungers: Drawing a metaphor
17 May 2024
O.M. Ungers: Drawing a metaphor17 May 2024
– Diogo Lopes and Fanny Noël
This drawing emerged within the framework of a summer school in Berlin, organized by Oswald Mathias Ungers for his Cornell students in 1977. The project was developed by the German architect together with his assistants, Peter Riemann, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Kolhoff and Arthur Ovaska and it offers a vision for… Read More
John Hejduk’s Farm Library
15 May 2024
John Hejduk’s Farm Library15 May 2024
– Mehrshad Atashi and Lida Badafareh
Farm Library is one among the sixty-eight entities that John Hejduk designed for the Lancaster/Hanover Masque. It is a primitive round object, with a spiral staircase positioned in its centre, running from the ground to the top. The bookshelves of the library are aligned with the boundary of the building, maintaining a distance… Read More
Banham in Buffalo
13 May 2024
Banham in Buffalo13 May 2024
[Our] main emphasis in this course has been on using primary sources in studying architectural history. By this I mean that we have been using the building itself as the first source of information about the history of the building.[1] Reyner Banham moved to America in 1976 to take up… Read More
Hermann Czech: Approximate Line of Action
9 May 2024
Hermann Czech: Approximate Line of Action9 May 2024
Hermann Czech: Ungefähre Hauptrichtung (Approximate Line of Action) is on show at Fanz-Josef-Kai 3, Vienna, from 16 March – 9 June, 2024. On 15 March 2024, an exhibition on the Austrian architect Hermann Czech’s work opened in Vienna at the exhibition space Franz-Josefs-Kai 3 (fJk3). It is the first retrospective… Read More
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture
6 May 2024
Giuseppe Terragni’s Primordial Architecture6 May 2024
What does the bozzetto that the young Giuseppe Terragni made in 1926, together with Pietro Lingeri, for the competition for the Monumento ai Caduti (War Memorial) in Como have to tell us? It speaks to us of the complexity of its creator, a complexity that Terragni shares with Italian art… Read More
In the Archive: New and Found 3
3 May 2024
In the Archive: New and Found 33 May 2024
– Editors
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. 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 There was excitement when Enzo Mari’s resin… Read More
The Well-Constructed Joke: Comic Architecture
1 May 2024
The Well-Constructed Joke: Comic Architecture1 May 2024
This article first appeared in German: ‘Der gut gebaute Witz’ in Der Architekt 4/21 ‘Effekt und Affekt, Psychologie in der Architektur’ (2021), 60-63. 18 September 2021 Kurt W. Forster writing to Holger Kleine (translated from German) ‘… reading your essay on Paul Rudolph’s Hastings Hall. A fabulous piece, itself a kind of… Read More
Sugimoto and Architecture
29 April 2024
Sugimoto and Architecture29 April 2024
The early twentieth century saw a multifaceted blossoming of the avant-garde in Europe, with Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, De Stijl… These movements also had an influence on architecture. Until the nineteenth century, people’s way of living was centred around religion. Much architectural decoration was developed in order to express the magnificence… Read More
Sugimoto and Architecture: A Conversation between David Chipperfield and Ralph Rugoff
29 April 2024
Sugimoto and Architecture: A Conversation between David Chipperfield and Ralph Rugoff29 April 2024
– David Chipperfield and Ralph Rugoff
This interview is excerpted from the catalogue of Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, which was on show at the Hayward Gallery, London, 11 October 2023 – 07 January 2024, and is touring to UCCA Beijing and MCA Australia. Copies of the catalogue can be purchased here. Ralph Rugoff: Hiroshi Sugimoto has… Read More
James Stirling, and the Industrialization of Architecture?
26 April 2024
James Stirling, and the Industrialization of Architecture?26 April 2024
James Stirling’s presentation drawing from 1957 to a faculty of engineers might seem strangely familiar to contemporary architects. A section of a box, showing the structure, services, and how people might dwell inside—it almost anticipates the prefabricated modular construction architects are now being asked to design. Only a few years… Read More
A Bath for Immortality
24 April 2024
A Bath for Immortality24 April 2024
It is 1971 and the city is Graz. ‘If we look at the city as a set of artefacts that can be modified over time, homogeneous and isotropic, correlated to the physical reality of the landscape and the territory, and at the same time if we refuse to take part… Read More
Hans Hollein at Drawing Matter
23 April 2024
Hans Hollein at Drawing Matter23 April 2024
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The Austrian architect Hans Hollein (1934–2014) studied under Clemens Holzmeister at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and then at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the College of Environmental Design at the University of California Berkeley. With the sculptor and designer Walter Pichler he introduced a body of… Read More
OMA: London—Foreplay
19 April 2024
OMA: London—Foreplay19 April 2024
This is the first 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
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in conversation – Part 1
20 June 2024
Peter Wilson and Mark Dorrian in conversation – Part 120 June 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
sketch theoretical & imaginary urban form DMC