Period: c20th
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once
20 October 2023
Upper Lawn Pavilion: Strategy and Detail, Drawing / Feeling everything at once20 October 2023
In this film Stephen Bates discusses a group of drawings by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Upper Lawn Pavilion, dating from the late 1950s when the Smithsons bought the site, and the 1970s when the architects proposed several alterations—only some of which were realised. Stephen Bates’ relationship with the… Read More
Owen Jones and the V&A (2023) and Style and Solitude (2023) – Review
17 October 2023
Owen Jones and the V&A (2023) and Style and Solitude (2023) – Review17 October 2023
Now remembered almost only for The Grammar of Ornament (1856), Owen Jones, architect, designer, writer, publisher was regarded in his lifetime as one of the greats of British architectural and design culture, up with Pugin and Ruskin. Yet of his prolific output of some 60 buildings and interior schemes, nine… Read More
DMJ — Of Lines Terrestrial and Occult: Friedrich Gilly, Alberto Sartoris, Adolphe Appia, and the Matter of Perspective
2 October 2023
DMJ — Of Lines Terrestrial and Occult: Friedrich Gilly, Alberto Sartoris, Adolphe Appia, and the Matter of Perspective2 October 2023
This essay discusses three enigmatic one-point perspective drawings. The first was made by the precocious Prussian architect and teacher Friedrich Gilly, the second by Alberto Sartoris as a young student of architecture in Geneva, and the third by the relatively unknown modern Swiss scenographer Adolphe Appia. These drawings have been… Read More
Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch (2023) – Review
29 September 2023
Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch (2023) – Review29 September 2023
Paul Goesch was forcibly detained in a psychiatric hospital and, in 1940, murdered by the Nazis. Looking at these intense, yet often playful and exuberant drawings, it is impossible to forget the stark facts of his life. Which is unfortunate, because an exclusive attention to his personal history imposes a… Read More
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Garage door trio
18 September 2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Garage door trio18 September 2023
No sooner had I written about the door hook than my mother, sharp as ever at 98, revealed that the original had been stolen, along with parts of the front gate, presumably for their metal value. This hook was definitely her replacement, from Franchi on the Holloway Road, whilst the first… Read More
Architecture and Real Abstraction: Adler & Sullivan
12 September 2023
Architecture and Real Abstraction: Adler & Sullivan12 September 2023
This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. The… Read More
Denise Scott Brown ‘From Soane to the Strip’
1 September 2023
Denise Scott Brown ‘From Soane to the Strip’1 September 2023
The following text is an excerpt from Denise Scott Brown’s 2018 Soane Medal lecture, written by Thomas Weaver, and developed out of a series of conversations between Denise Scott Brown and Thomas Weaver in July 2018. I have never thought of myself as a photographer, only an architect and urbanist,… Read More
Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape
30 August 2023
Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape30 August 2023
This is film was made by team SHICHAI拾柴 for the exhibition ‘Drawing Landscape: Alberto Ponis,’ exhibited at Tongji University, Shanghai, 10 April—20 May 2023. It concludes a series of posts on Drawing Matter pairing team SHICHAI拾柴’s films with drawings from our collection; find these in the ‘related reading’ below.
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension
28 August 2023
Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove — Hook & Extension28 August 2023
Liza Fior, whose phone was used to take these snaps (I still refuse the portable-telephone obligation), was particularly taken by this hook for the garage door, the way it hangs, the perhaps deliberate chipping into the stone, ‘I am sure he planned it’. That minute attention to the smallest thing,… Read More
Thinking Through Twentieth-Century Architecture (2023) – Review
17 August 2023
Thinking Through Twentieth-Century Architecture (2023) – Review17 August 2023
Philosophy has long played an influential part in architectural practice and discourse. In the last twenty years, several new publications have started to trace the histories of this phenomenon. Some, like Branko Mitrović’s Philosophy for Architects (2011), lay out introductory surveys of major figures, works, and ideas at the overlap… Read More
Chloethiel Woodard Smith
16 August 2023
Chloethiel Woodard Smith16 August 2023
In June 2023 Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Professor of Art History at University College Dublin, gave a talk about American modernist architect and urban planner Chloethiel Woodard Smith. Part of the series ‘Rethinking Architectural Legacies’ at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the talk was titled ‘How to Succeed as a Woman: Chloethiel Woodard… Read More
Gathered Moments: Asplund’s Villa Snellman
28 September 2023
Gathered Moments: Asplund’s Villa Snellman28 September 2023
– Andrew Carr
Virginia Woolf’s use of short stories to form larger works, and her bracketing of inner discourse with physical objects and phenomena, suggest a similar episodic approach to architectural composition. Discrete moments are assembled to form a whole which is often held within an overarching temporal structure. This structure does not… Read More
plan domestic literature DMC