Period: c21st

In Defence of Metaphor

In Defence of Metaphor

Deanna Petherbridge

This text concludes Deanna Petherbridge’s series Drawing as Metaphor. The complete series will appear as a printed publication in the new year, designed by Studio Christopher Victor; the drawings will be on show at the Art Space Gallery (84 St Peter’s Street, London N1 8JS) in an exhibition titled Deanna Petherbridge: Drawing… Read More

Movements of the Drawing Hand

Movements of the Drawing Hand

Paul Clarke

How can you study the movements of the drawing hand? Although completed drawings can be interpreted, much the same way graphologists analyse the sequencing and flow of handwriting, can we see an architecture in the movements of the drawing hand? Can we be inside a drawing, and witness, as paper… Read More

El Croquis 208: DOGMA familiar/unfamiliar 2002–2021 (2021): Review

El Croquis 208: DOGMA familiar/unfamiliar 2002–2021 (2021): Review

Leonard Ma

As one of the most prominent architecture publications in the world, El Croquis has long been a prestige showcase for the upper echelon of architectural practices. Its publication format, with each issue typically devoted to a specific practice, lends El Croquis more the air of an exclusive monograph series than… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 18: Wolff Architects

Pan Scroll Zoom 18: Wolff Architects

Fabrizio Gallanti, Ilze Wolff and Heinrich Wolff

This is the eighteenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode, Heinrich Wolff and Ilze Wolff of Wolff Architects discuss the production of their drawings,… Read More

The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona

The Urban Fact: Aldo Rossi, The School, Fagnano Olona

Kersten Geers, Stefano Graziani and Jelena Pancevac

This is part one of two excerpts chosen from The Urban Fact: A Reference Book on Aldo Rossi. The second text, on Aldo Rossi’s Student Housing in Chieti, completed in 1976, will be available soon. Please see the end of the page for more information on this publication. The Olona… Read More

Architectonic Landscapes

Architectonic Landscapes

Deanna Petherbridge

This text is the fifth in a series by artist Deanna Petherbridge in which she comments on a number of her recent pen and ink drawings. The drawings use imagined architectural imagery as a metaphorical means to deal with complex subject matter about social and political issues. Read the introduction to the series, here.… Read More

Writing Prize 2021: Itsuko Hasegawa, Capturing an Infinite Distance

Writing Prize 2021: Itsuko Hasegawa, Capturing an Infinite Distance

Ahmed Belkhodja

Negatives Of the 120,027 items included in the archives of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, 16,010 are part of the collection called ‘Architecture’, and 22,877 are filed as ‘Negative film’. Astonishingly, only one entry sits in both: ‘Ensemble de 12 négatifs couleur (4 pour le projet Bizan, 6 pour le… Read More

Alberto Ponis on Casa Scalesciani

Alberto Ponis on Casa Scalesciani

Alberto Ponis

The site chosen by Juan S., an Argentinian with a penchant for Italy, was almost alarmingly steep and sheer above the sea. Even the path leading to it was perilous, and trodden with bated breath. During our long conversations about where the house would be built, we were not so… Read More

Hélène Binet: The Intimacy of Making, Three Historical Sites in Korea (2021): Review

Hélène Binet: The Intimacy of Making, Three Historical Sites in Korea (2021): Review

Helen Thomas

What is a myth, today? I shall give at the outset a first, very simple answer, which is perfectly consistent with etymology: myth is a type of speech.– Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1957 This seemingly simple book is a thought-provoking collection of things. There is a lot of room for implication… Read More

The Hidden Horizontal. Cornices in Art and Architecture: Exhibition Review

The Hidden Horizontal. Cornices in Art and Architecture: Exhibition Review

Cammy Brothers

Architecture is never an easy topic for exhibitions, because the level of knowledge and pre-existing interest of the public is difficult to gauge. A show devoted specifically to a single architectural detail, seen across a historic panorama, is even more challenging. But this is the ambition of ‘The Hidden Horizontal:… Read More

Lines, Drawings, the Human Condition

Lines, Drawings, the Human Condition

Tim Ingold, Momoyo Kaijima, Andreas Kalpakci and Anh-linh Ngo

This conversation between Tim Ingold, Momoyo Kaijima, Andreas Kalpakci and Anh-linh Ngo was first published, in German translation, in issue 238 of ARCH+ (March 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the editors of ARCH+ for allowing us to publish the original English version of the text. Momoyo Kaijima: With… Read More

Doodles: Stirling Wilford and Associates, 1984–2000

Doodles: Stirling Wilford and Associates, 1984–2000

Marco Iuliano

The architectural trajectory of James Stirling has always been considered that of the individual genius, whilst acknowledging his close links to certain educational and working companions: his lifetime maestro Colin Rowe; the partners James Gowan and Michael Wilford, and the Associates, Laurence Bain and Russell Bevington. Without diminishing the importance and the inspirational role of… Read More

The Order of Terror

The Order of Terror

Deanna Petherbridge

This text is the fourth in a series by artist Deanna Petherbridge in which she comments on a number of her recent pen and ink drawings. The drawings use imagined architectural imagery as a metaphorical means to deal with complex subject matter about social and political issues. Read the introduction to the series, here.… Read More

Christoph Schlingensiefs Operndorf Afrika (2020): Review

Christoph Schlingensiefs Operndorf Afrika (2020): Review

Erandi de Silva

The Opera Village is a complex located thirty kilometres from the capital of Burkina Faso that was initiated by the late German film, theatre, and opera director, author, and action artist, Christoph Schlingensief and envisioned as a site centring African artists and enabling cross-cultural creative exchange. The ever-expanding project combines… Read More

Writing Prize 2021: Reading Material

Writing Prize 2021: Reading Material

Rebecca Disney

This is a narrative of listening: listening to materials, processes, place and self. When you sit in a room and read a book you are not looking at your environment – you perceive, touch, and smell its atmosphere and presence. Inadvertently, you register the space that surrounds you. During the initial… Read More

Writing Prize 2021: Live My Drawings

Writing Prize 2021: Live My Drawings

Ying Xuan Chian

Prologue: Panic! at K’s office Location: K’s office, University of Sheffield, Arts Tower Characters: Tutor: K (calm, knowing) Student: Me (facing an existential crisis, encountering a creative block, second-year hysteria… you get the idea) Brief: To design a library  I am fascinated by the heterogeneity of our experience of built… Read More

Clancy Moore Architects: Atcost

Clancy Moore Architects: Atcost

Andrew Clancy and Colm Moore

The Atcost project makes space for storage, education and performance, enabling a diverse range of activities to enhance the growing programme of Drawing Matter: summer schools, events, and away days for universities and practices. After noticing that the vast majority of these activities take place in summer, we proposed an… Read More

Notations (2016): Review & Excerpt

Notations (2016): Review & Excerpt

Richard Hall

Notations is a collection of pamphlets in a box. Curating the content in this manner has allowed the editors to present the publication as a physical representation of their thesis that the notebook is a device for the cultivation of individual worlds. The plurality is important. The pamphlets are collected… Read More

Pan Scroll Zoom 17: Monadnock

Pan Scroll Zoom 17: Monadnock

Job Floris and Fabrizio Gallanti

This is the seventeenth in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of drawings in presentations and reviews. Here, Fabrizio interviews Job Floris, co-founder of Mondanock, about their teaching studios at the EFPL and Harvard… Read More

The Silo at 40Hz

The Silo at 40Hz

Joe Banks and Jonah Ginsburg

DISINFORMATION, CLOSED CIRCUIT, 2021Video documentation recorded on August 1, 2021 – the last day of the installation. Headphones recommended. ‘Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality and [of] engendering dreams’, and, perhaps paradoxically, in the silo at Shatwell, a familiar architectural form is re-purposed… Read More

Unpeopled Places

Unpeopled Places

Deanna Petherbridge

This text is the third in a series by artist Deanna Petherbridge in which she comments on a number of her recent pen and ink drawings. The drawings use imagined architectural imagery as a metaphorical means to deal with complex subject matter about social and political issues. Read the introduction to the series, here.… Read More

Survey: Piazza Grande, Gubbio, Perugia

Survey: Piazza Grande, Gubbio, Perugia

Biba Dow

This painting was made in the early evening in the main square of the medieval town of Gubbio, in central Italy (Perugia). Reached by climbing up narrow winding streets, the Piazza Grande opens out as a belvedere to the southwest, looking across rooftops to the plain below the Apennine foothills.… Read More

Craving Primal Architecture

Craving Primal Architecture

Rory Chisholm

‘Architecture does not only respond to the functional and conscious intellectual and social needs of today’s city dweller; it must also remember the primordial hunter and farmer concealed in the body. Our sensations of comfort, protection and home are rooted in the primordial experiences of countless generations.’ [1] – Juhani Pallasmaa… Read More

Where to Begin? – Juhani Pallasmaa

Where to Begin? – Juhani Pallasmaa

Juhani Pallasmaa

This is the first in a series revisiting responses from architects to the question: Where to Begin?. The question was posed by the Drawing Matter editors while compiling the first volume in our Extracts series – find more information here. Beginning to sketch a project has always been easier for me… Read More