Period: c20th
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism
19 October 2022
‘Then There Was War’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism19 October 2022
As my title indicates, this text will focus on John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses project from the mid-1970s, but I want to approach it in the first instance by way of Roland Barthes’s reflections on the ‘Neutral’. This is the topic of the lectures that Barthes delivered at the Collège de France… Read More
In the Archive: Petit, Lebas, Fontaine, Le Corbusier and Kolář
4 October 2022
In the Archive: Petit, Lebas, Fontaine, Le Corbusier and Kolář4 October 2022
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. In this series, Drawing Matter invites visitors to write about material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that they have viewed as part of their research. In The Library at Night, Alberto Manguel likens a library to a human brain and… Read More
Materia 3: Red Oxide
30 September 2022
Materia 3: Red Oxide30 September 2022
This text is the third in a series by Gordon Shrigley titled ‘Materia’ in which the architect meditates on the physical and semiotic nature of a number of everyday construction products. The first and second texts in the series, on render and corrugated iron, can be read here. Architects are subsumed within… Read More
Kay Fisker: Danish Functionalism and Block-based Housing (2022) – Review
29 September 2022
Kay Fisker: Danish Functionalism and Block-based Housing (2022) – Review29 September 2022
This is a useful book. It is also a book that might be thought of as a vehicle or encouragement towards another book, a foundation for future work, either by the editors, or other architects, architectural historians, or even sociologists. It arose from the fascination of two Irish architects, Andrew… Read More
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine
26 September 2022
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine26 September 2022
In 1968 Adolfo Natalini’s partner, Frances Brunton, returned to Florence from London with their newborn daughter and a small wooden chest with five drawers. On three sides of the chest, Natalini hand painted sky-blue flowers on an orange background. The chest of drawers was then taken to the Superstudio-studio in… Read More
Robert Maxwell: The Letter, the Lost Sketchbook and the Lecture
23 September 2022
Robert Maxwell: The Letter, the Lost Sketchbook and the Lecture23 September 2022
– Editors
These three sketches are from a sketchbook that Robert Maxwell used while studying at the Liverpool School of Architecture in 1944. They are reproduced here to mark the publication of Robert Maxwell: the Letter, the Lost Sketchbook and the Lecture, edited by Celia Scott, which is now available through Drawing… Read More
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle
12 September 2022
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle12 September 2022
This drawing is a print of a hand drawing I made eighteen years ago on a roll of tracing paper. The original drawing, made with rapidograph pens and a pencil, is now lost. Last month this blueprint was moved to Drawing Matter’s archive. Drawing Matter asked me to explain why… Read More
Aldo Rossi: Dieses Ist Lange Her/ora Questo e Perduto
9 September 2022
Aldo Rossi: Dieses Ist Lange Her/ora Questo e Perduto9 September 2022
Looking at This was a long time ago/now this is lost, as well as other drawings in Rossi’s unofficial collection of l’architettura assassinata, brings to mind the image of a feast. The scenes are funereal indeed, but they hold a festive aura, as if a celebration had just taken place… Read More
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)
7 September 2022
Krier/Culot: Architecture, language and process (1977)7 September 2022
The essay by Robert Maxwell linked below was sent to Drawing Matter by Celia Scott earlier this year. It was first published in Architectural Design, March 1977, as part of a longer feature titled ‘The Role of Ideology’, which discussed the theme through the writing of the architect and historian… Read More
Lenin’s Tomb, the Second Version
5 September 2022
Lenin’s Tomb, the Second Version5 September 2022
– Niall Hobhouse and Markus Lähteenmäki
The following email exchange took place between Niall Hobhouse, founder of Drawing Matter, and Markus Lähteenmäki in July 2022. Dear Markus, Came across these here in the archive… from god knows where exactly. Thought you might have something to say – had forgotten that it was originally ‘dummied’ in wood.… Read More
Mies van der Rohe and the Universal Space Project
30 August 2022
Mies van der Rohe and the Universal Space Project30 August 2022
I must say that I was far more riveted by another Mies . . . who, in perfect International Style manner continued to insist on architecture and the production of truth as generated by a set of a priori and universalizing laws, and who was caught up in the entirely… Read More
Edifice
19 August 2022
Edifice19 August 2022
These slides were sent to us by Philippa Lewis in response to Gordon Shrigley’s article on render; photographs to expand on the possibilities of the material, some results purposeful and some incidentally beautiful. Gillian Darley and Philippa Lewis started Edifice in around 1987 – a stock library source for the… Read More
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin
17 August 2022
Turning Point: The US Embassy in Dublin17 August 2022
This is an extract of the construction drawings produced by John M. Johansen’s office in 1963 for the cylindrical US Embassy in Dublin. It is a three-dimensional ink drawing of the external precast concrete structure, describing two single-storey bays in isolation. Viewed abstractly it could almost be an anatomical study,… Read More
Objects That Meet
15 August 2022
Objects That Meet15 August 2022
Revered objects that move about in design circles and are found in publications, museums, and galleries earn their status through persistence over time. Take two famous chairs, Gerrit Rietveld’s Red Blue chair of 1918–23 and Thomas Lee’s Adirondack chair of 1903. All chairs have met just by being chairs, but… Read More
W. R. Lethaby: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth
10 August 2022
W. R. Lethaby: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth10 August 2022
This is the first text in this series, where Hugh Strange visits key texts throughout W. R. Lethaby’s life. Here we start at the beginning with Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, first published in 1891. In many respects, and certainly in relation to his later output, William Richard Lethaby’s first book,… Read More
Power & Public Space 9: Ana Bonet Miró – Fun Palace
3 August 2022
Power & Public Space 9: Ana Bonet Miró – Fun Palace3 August 2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Ana Bonet Miró
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Since its conception in the 1960s, the Fun Palace has circulated widely in architecture culture, and mainly through its provocative collages, characterised… Read More
Power & Public Space 8: Markus LäHteenmäki – Lev Rudnev’s Monument to the Victims of the Revolution
29 July 2022
Power & Public Space 8: Markus LäHteenmäki – Lev Rudnev’s Monument to the Victims of the Revolution29 July 2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and Markus Lähteenmäki
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Markus Lähteenmäki’s research explores, in part, how architecture became instrumental in the societal and cultural transformations that took place in revolutionary Russia. … Read More
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing
28 July 2022
Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Architecture as Drawing28 July 2022
– Mark Dorrian and Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Drawing Matter is delighted to present three texts by Alberto Pérez-Gómez on architecture and its representation, the first writings by him to be carried on the Drawing Matter website. The first, ‘Architecture as Drawing’, is an early essay that initially appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education in 1982, a… Read More
Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)
22 July 2022
Power & Public Space 6: André Patrão – Eisenman, Derrida, and Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)22 July 2022
– Matthew Blunderfield and André Patrão
Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Parc de la Villette was emblematic of the strong ties made between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy in the 1980s, where… Read More
Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review
18 July 2022
Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review18 July 2022
The exhibition of Freddie Phillipson’s drawings reconstructing the Dublin of James Joyce’s Ulysses opened on Bloomsday, helping to celebrate the centenary of the publication of the novel. The exhibition is essential viewing for anyone interested in how the European city and its architecture support a culture, and for anyone interested… Read More
Missing Link: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970-1980) – Review
10 October 2022
Missing Link: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970-1980) – Review10 October 2022
– Erik Wegerhoff
There is a strange moment in the second room of the exhibition, where all kinds of great works are hung on the walls to admire, organised around a central display of plastic and aluminium furniture: a collage of a car hovering like the golden calf amidst a crazed crowd; a… Read More