Period: c21st
Asplund’s Villa Snellman: An Oblique View
08.10.2026
Asplund’s Villa Snellman: An Oblique View08.10.2026
Situated sometime and somewhere between Paul Cézanne and the Villa Savoye, in the second decade of the twentieth century, is Erik Gunnar Asplund’s Villa Snellman. The building was designed and constructed between 1917 and 1918 for a bank director, and is situated in Djursholm, a suburb of Stockholm. At first… Read More
Freddie Phillipson: The Ulysses Project (Video)
01.10.2026
Freddie Phillipson: The Ulysses Project (Video)01.10.2026
On Bloomsday 2026—the single day on which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place—Freddie Phillipson presented and discussed drawings of Dublin as experienced in the novel, taken from his twenty-year exploration of Joyce’s landmark text. During the evening, Phillipson’s working and finished drawings were displayed in the Drawing Matter archive and he read from the… Read More
For Peter Salter
28.09.2026
For Peter Salter28.09.2026
1. Very few stories are narrated either to idealise or condemn: rather they testify to the always slightly surprising range of the possible. Although concerned with everyday events, they are mystery stories.[1] In an appreciation of Alison and Peter Smithson, Peter Salter spoke of them as skilled storytellers.[2] In particular,… Read More
‘Unschärfe’
24.09.2026
‘Unschärfe’24.09.2026
Four sketches and a photograph, scanned together, form a single drawing. Its pencil lines release an energy that condenses, figures, and elaborates without intention for the ruly. Quickly drawn and redrawn, slightly smudged, and enigmatically annotated, the top-left lines dwell on forces of form. Initially layered, subsequently intertwined. To their… Read More
An Interview with David Connor
18.09.2026
An Interview with David Connor18.09.2026
– Gianni Botsford and David Connor
* Gianni Botsford (GB): What I said that I could talk to you about is where it all started for you, how you learned to draw, where your drawing method came from, and how it developed over time. David Connor (DC): I did start to draw when I was 4 or 5, which would… Read More
DMJ – Notes on Derek Boshier
11.09.2026
DMJ – Notes on Derek Boshier 11.09.2026
Derek Boshier’s 16 Situations (1971) could be experienced both in print and as an installation. The exhibition, which toured from early 1971 before being shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in September and October 1973, was simple in concept: the viewer followed a wall with 16 altered photographic images, each one with the… Read More
What’s in a Detail?
10.09.2026
What’s in a Detail? 10.09.2026
The following text appears in the recently published book The Drawing and the Space: Reflections on 10 Years of Design Research and Education, edited by Thierry Lagrange, Jo Van Den Berghe, Enrico Miglietta, and Liselotte Vroman. The book brings together a decade of work developed through design research and pedagogical… Read More
The House Without Character
07.09.2026
The House Without Character07.09.2026
– Christian Schweitzer and Ryul Song
Ever since I first encountered Arnulf Rainer’s Overpaintings in an exhibition, I was captivated by them. In 1954, he started to draw with oil crayons over photographs of himself, directly and spontaneously reacting to his own image. They are extremely powerful and honest, revealing a fundamental truth that photography on… Read More
Franco Purini: Drawings of Imagination
03.09.2026
Franco Purini: Drawings of Imagination03.09.2026
‘The drawing represents the medianic exploration of the shaded side of reason and, contradictorily, the scene of an ideal landscape in which the architect believes he will be happy. As the place of theoretical truth, the drawing institutes itself independently of architecture. Superior to architecture by the fact that it… Read More
Reclaiming the Visual in Architectural Theory
31.08.2026
Reclaiming the Visual in Architectural Theory31.08.2026
Among the most influential books of architectural theory in the last three centuries is the Essai sur l’Architecture by Marc-Antoine Laugier, published in 1753. The book’s goal was to establish the foundational principles of architecture, and thus the rules for designing proper buildings. The author argued that these rules descend… Read More
A Palimpsest in Line: A Graphic Biography of the Hasselt Beguinage
21.08.2026
A Palimpsest in Line: A Graphic Biography of the Hasselt Beguinage21.08.2026
– Koenraad Van Cleempoel and Joshua Kempen
The revitalisation of the Hasselt Beguinage and its transformation into the Faculty of Architecture and Arts has created an opportunity to reconsider the role of drawing as a critical mode of inquiry in adaptive reuse. Rather than treating drawing as a purely representational tool, the project frames it as an… Read More
Atlas of Seyðisfjörður
20.08.2026
Atlas of Seyðisfjörður 20.08.2026
This collection of drawings documents a series of studies undertaken in the town of Seyðisfjörður in East Iceland. I first visited the town in the autumn of 2020. A few hours after I left, a landslide destroyed a large part of it. Although landslides have become more frequent in our… Read More
Models of Models: The House Transformed
17.08.2026
Models of Models: The House Transformed17.08.2026
The house is architecture’s most overdetermined subject. It carries the weight of every disciplinary trope, cultural norm, political aspiration, and sentimental projection that can be placed on a building. To approach it critically—and to argue that its conventions have been an instrument of exclusion rather than a neutral container—is itself… Read More
BOLLES+WILSON: Drawing Towards Building (Exhibition + Talk)
14.08.2026
BOLLES+WILSON: Drawing Towards Building (Exhibition + Talk)14.08.2026
– Editors
On Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July, Drawing Matter presented an exhibition of drawings by BOLLES+WILSON (founded in London in 1980; based in Münster since 1988). The exhibition was the fourth in a series presenting the work of architects and practices that are represented in the Drawing Matter Collection by significant portfolios… Read More
DMJ – Storytelling by Omission: On Dixon Jones’s ‘Selective Axonometrics’
13.08.2026
DMJ – Storytelling by Omission: On Dixon Jones’s ‘Selective Axonometrics’13.08.2026
Architectural drawings tell stories through what they omit as much as what they depict. This article explores the role of thoughtful omission in axonometric drawing through two drawings made by British practice Dixon Jones Architects from the 1990s. While architectural practice has come to favour photorealistic representations that present a… Read More
Drawing Motion as Thought
10.08.2026
Drawing Motion as Thought10.08.2026
– MRND
A design (can) begin in the domain of the barely articulate, where drawing operates less as representation than as an instrument for sensing forces that precede form. The early sketches that remain unseen—those made without the burden of explanation—constitute a theoretical ground in which motion is not depicted but pursued.… Read More
Cartography of a Wound
06.08.2026
Cartography of a Wound06.08.2026
How do you draw a diamond mine? How do you depict a wound on the terrain, a spiral of extraction so powerful that it reorganises entire territories? On the sheet, the mine becomes a self-contained world—a floating territory of pits, conveyor belts, processing sheds, and housing blocks—but it also acts… Read More
Three Drawings
24.07.2026
Three Drawings24.07.2026
This first drawing is not ours. It is a clumsy sketch that clients brought to our first meeting. Although not particularly legible, let alone well-proportionated, it carried the noble ambition of speaking about many things at once: it addressed everything, everywhere, all at once. Close inspection revealed three floor plans,… Read More
Eye, Hand and Mind: An Interview on the Drawing Process
23.07.2026
Eye, Hand and Mind: An Interview on the Drawing Process 23.07.2026
– Bryan Cantley and Helen Castle
The following conversation between Bryan Cantley and Helen Castle, publishing director at RIBA, was conducted on 30 December 2021 and has been adapted from a text, originally presented in Speculative Coolness: Architecture, Media, the Real, and the Virtual (Routledge, 2023). It traces the development of Cantley’s experimental drawing practice through Form:uLA—a body of work sustained since… Read More
Yes, And
20.07.2026
Time Theft
16.07.2026
Time Theft16.07.2026
* Jamie Lipson is a Canadian artist and architect. He received a Master of Architecture from Princeton University, where he was awarded the Howard Crosby Butler Travelling Fellowship and Alpha Rho Chi medal. His son Orion turns 2 in July. This text is one of the selected responses to the… Read More
A Suite for the Absent Addressee
13.07.2026
A Suite for the Absent Addressee13.07.2026
Prelude Construction has ceased abruptly. The inertia of instruction persists. When drawing is deprived of an addressee, the drift between the prescriptive and the descriptive intensifies. Act I: Villa Consider Villa Pisani Placco by Andrea Palladio, built for Francesco Pisani between 1552 and 1555 in Montagnana. Three elements are of interest:… Read More
Snapshots of Aldo Rossi’s San Cataldo Cemetery
02.10.2026
Snapshots of Aldo Rossi’s San Cataldo Cemetery02.10.2026
– Luis Callejas and Julia Spackman
The following conversation has been adapted from a longer interview first published in Pairs 5, now including drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. * Julia Spackman (JS): This collection of snapshots by Katie Ladd of Aldo Rossi’s San Cataldo Cemetery is a striking departure from its typical depiction.[1] For one, the… Read More
landscape photograph presentation