Period: c21st
The Architect of Impossible Physics
06.11.2025
The Architect of Impossible Physics06.11.2025
More than once, when describing the processes involved in creating these drawings, my listener has responded with two words in particular: loading and channelling. I thought I would and should elaborate. The initial first gestures, lines, squiggles, scratches, smudges and randomisations of the mark making inform the start to the work in these… Read More
Protected: Drawings of Architectures
28.10.2025
Protected: Drawings of Architectures28.10.2025
– Primitivo González and Niall Hobhouse
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Protected: DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight
24.10.2025
Protected: DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight24.10.2025
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Drawing Al-Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp
16.10.2025
Drawing Al-Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp16.10.2025
This drawing depicts, from above, the Al-Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in neighbouring Jordan, as of May 2013. Each square drawn is not a symbol: it is a tent. Drawing the camp by hand was important for many reasons: each line looks the way it is from years of individual layered knowledge, where one’s… Read More
Building with Writing
02.10.2025
Building with Writing02.10.2025
Stan Allen’s exhibition Building with Writing, an installation documenting 40 years of writing and drawing practice, is currently presented at the Graham Foundation as part of the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial, led by Florencia Rodríguez, Artistic Director, and Igo Kommers Wender, Associate Curator. The exhibition was curated by Michael Meredith, with… Read More
Vor-textu(r)al Translations from Building to Drawing
22.09.2025
Vor-textu(r)al Translations from Building to Drawing22.09.2025
Architecture emerges somewhere in the interval between the first mark of drawing and building; it is from this interstitial space that potential stirs, waiting to be swept up in bouts of differential combustion. In this sense, architecture is neither drawing nor building but something that exceeds both, while transforming their… Read More
Bernat Klein Studio
18.09.2025
Bernat Klein Studio18.09.2025
Travelling north through the Borders over the years, regardless of route, a diversion along a twisting country road north of Selkirk was always on the cards. Navigating a dangerous bend in the road, no time to stop, was rewarded by a fleeting glimpse of an enigmatic presence amongst the trees.… Read More
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space
11.09.2025
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space 11.09.2025
Neglected Dimensions: Rough Sketches for Public Space by Paul Carter mediates between graphic form and text, movement-tracking, and place-making to delineate the interstices of public space: what escapes its formal description and what falls outside official design. The book responds to pertinent concerns about the interface between the designers of public… Read More
Tolerance
04.09.2025
Tolerance04.09.2025
Too many people have talked about how profoundly the production of architecture has changed in the wake of the digital revolution. Far fewer have noted how architecture has resisted the seductive flourishes of digital production and maintained a dogged continuity with social and historical space. Bricks remain bricky even when… Read More
Fabric Fabrications
27.08.2025
Fabric Fabrications27.08.2025
Interpretation I am very grateful to Mark Dorrian for his reading of my 1977 drawing. [1] While at the time of its laborious production, the word shroud was not uppermost as my intended coding, I can now see that the dark, drawn folds have a real, symbolic or imaginary resonance—subsequently… Read More
A Machine is a House for Making a Living
25.08.2025
A Machine is a House for Making a Living25.08.2025
‘Mobility’ has long been a theme in architecture. After observing everyday life in Chinese cities, we became interested in exploring an understanding of mobility, which is not primarily defined by motion, but by the practices of pausing and occupying urban space. The discovery comes from the vehicles used by street… Read More
Typology: A conversation
13.08.2025
Typology: A conversation13.08.2025
– Richard Hall, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner
In Spring 2025, Hans van der Heijden and Andreas Lechner corresponded about books which each had recently published that deal with the issue of ‘type’ and the role of drawing in typological work.[1] Hans invited Richard Hall to join the conversation, widening the discussion to three generations working in three… Read More
Urban Landscape
07.08.2025
Urban Landscape07.08.2025
The following method for drawing urban landscapes was sent to us by Mehdi Zannad after his recent visit to Drawing Matter. It was first published by éditions Parenthèses in Topo-graphies in 2020. The view drawn by Mehdi is located near to the publisher’s office, which allowed him to scan each… Read More
Metabolism of a Dwelling
14.07.2025
Metabolism of a Dwelling14.07.2025
Surrounded by the world’s most advanced robotic technologies, electronic dance music, and solemn tonal soundscapes lies The Metabolic Home, an installation by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou currently on view in the Arsenale at this year’s Venice Biennale. The project constructs a densely configured environment in which everyday domesticity—cooking, sleeping,… Read More
Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge. The São Salvador de Figueredo Parish Church by Paulo Providência
03.07.2025
Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge. The São Salvador de Figueredo Parish Church by Paulo Providência03.07.2025
The book Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge is essential reading for anyone interested in Paulo Providência’s renovation of the parish church of São Salvador, Figueredo, 1992-2002, as well as for understanding his singular architectural poetics. A beautifully published suite of drawings (29 pages, including 4 foldouts) and photographs (34 pages) is supported… Read More
Boundaries
30.06.2025
Boundaries30.06.2025
Boundaries in our work carry many different meanings. On maps, a boundary is at first just a line from one point to another. It likely originated with domestication, when it became important to separate territories, so everyone knew which plants and animals they were responsible for. It’s an abstract concept,… 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
Kasuri Nomad Horizon
09.06.2025
Kasuri Nomad Horizon09.06.2025
This actor-network diagram traces the journey from raw materials to eventual disposal for Kasuri Nomad Horizon, a furniture set crafted from Bingo Kasuri, a traditional Japanese cotton fabric. Created for the Distillation of Architecture: 家具 exhibition at the Architectural Association School of Architecture from the 17th January to the 7th… Read More
House in Maia
29.05.2025
House in Maia29.05.2025
The transformation of a single-family house built on a plot in the centre of the city of Maia was carried out with consideration to its previous condition as a conceptual motif: an ordinary house, with no qualities of note, detached from the city, spatially uninteresting or even, one might say,… Read More
The Eternal Change – The Coming of a Ruin
22.05.2025
The Eternal Change – The Coming of a Ruin22.05.2025
During the spring of 2024, I was fortunate to spend some time in Rome as a fellow at the Danish Institute. My agenda was to delve deeper into the importance of water in the eternal city—having chosen the Italian capital as the context of this investigation due to the significant… Read More
House Container
12.05.2025
House Container12.05.2025
The House Container was designed and converted by Paul Rawson in 2006. Originally sited at Hadspen House, it was moved to Shatwell Farm and used as short-term accommodation for visitors the archive and site.
Lisson to Tony Fretton
05.05.2025
Lisson to Tony Fretton05.05.2025
– Tony Fretton and Ricardo Aboim Inglez
Tony Fretton founded his architectural practice (Tony Fretton Architects) in 1982 in London. He came into international prominence in 1991 after the completion of the second Lisson Gallery building, transforming the street into an urban setting to be absorbed by culture. From his house in London and over two hours,… Read More
Wang Shu: Drawing Uncommon Grounds
24.04.2025
Wang Shu: Drawing Uncommon Grounds24.04.2025
– Xin Jin
Despite the extensive literature on Chinese experimental architecture that emerged in the mid-1990s after the Cultural Revolution, architects’ reflections on and practices of representation remain under explored. Wang Shu (王澍), recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Prize, is a prominent figure in Chinese experimental architecture. Though widely acclaimed in the West… Read More
Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives
15.09.2025
Excuse My Dust, or the Air I Breathe: Notes on Architecture in the Archives15.09.2025
– Marco Moro
The following text is a partially revised version of that delivered and published in ‘Stoà Open Seminar. Emerging perspectives on teaching and research in architectural design’ (May 2024). It has since become the conceptual framework for a series of seminars held on the same subject at the School of Architecture… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric) archives