Tag: culture
Landing Square Scenarios: The Wilhelmina Pier & Luxor Theatre
29 January 2024
Landing Square Scenarios: The Wilhelmina Pier & Luxor Theatre29 January 2024
Radical Scenarios for Rotterdam For a while in the 1990s, Berlin and Rotterdam were seen as embodiments of opposing strategies in city making. Postwar Berlin was the laboratory for the ‘Reconstruction of the European City’—blocks with 22m facades—while Rotterdam, largely destroyed by German bombing during WW2, became a zone of… Read More
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia
26 April 2023
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia26 April 2023
In the years prior to the commencement of his major built works, Bridgebuilding No.4 Ponte dell’Accademia holds a critical position within the formative projects of the architect Peter Wilson. The design was prepared in response to an open international architecture competition that was launched under Aldo Rossi’s directorship of the… Read More
Alison and Peter Smithson’s Collages as Reinventing Established Reality
24 February 2023
Alison and Peter Smithson’s Collages as Reinventing Established Reality24 February 2023
Alison and Peter Smithson often introduced figures that were protagonists in the news, such as Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, French actor Gérard Philipe, and the first prime minister of Independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru into their architectural drawings for social housing projects—as in the case of their collages for the… Read More
Where in the World are We? Melbourne Venice Studios 2022
22 September 2022
Where in the World are We? Melbourne Venice Studios 202222 September 2022
Remote teaching as a pandemic consequence has already been a theme for Drawing Matter, in the January 2022 Melbourne University Venice Workshop it reached an almost surreal zenith. Remoteness is fundamental to Australia, whether the extreme separations of the outback or a pre-digital geographic estrangement from global cultural discourses. At… Read More
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House
10 June 2022
Benjamin Wistar Morris and a new Metropolitan Opera House10 June 2022
A recent acquisition of six drawings by the American architect Benjamin Wistar Morris reveals his long involvement with one of the most important urban projects of the twentieth century. Morris’s role in this project was a highlight of his career although he has not been widely associated with it. A… Read More
Working with Tony Fretton
4 January 2022
Working with Tony Fretton4 January 2022
In the early 1990s a number of architects, academics and artists came together in a rather fluid manner, meeting regularly in my Bloomsbury apartment. Tony Fretton was older than most of us and had already established a clear critical position. The conversations we had, and sometimes the arguments, were instructive… Read More
The Metropolitan Opera House, NYC: Invisible guests
15 October 2021
The Metropolitan Opera House, NYC: Invisible guests15 October 2021
The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.– Czesław Miłosz, from Ars Poetica? My father, Tad Leski, was an architect and designer for Wallace… Read More
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh
15 June 2021
Notes on Twelve drawings for the Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh15 June 2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh
7 June 2021
Notes on The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh7 June 2021
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier on the Brazilian Pavillion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in 1958 and in the Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1959 to 1965. The… Read More
Casino Royale: Stynen’s unrealised sculpture garden
30 March 2021
Casino Royale: Stynen’s unrealised sculpture garden30 March 2021
The city council of the seaside town Oostende organised a competition for its new casino-kursaal in 1945, and a design by Antwerp architect Léon Stynen was chosen as the winner the following year. Stynen was a prominent name by that time, having previously designed casinos for Knokke, Chaudfontaine, and Blankenberge.… Read More
Singing Songs of Piccadilly: Review
16 February 2021
Singing Songs of Piccadilly: Review16 February 2021
– Editors
Niall Hobhouse writes about The Buildings of Green Park by Andrew Jones. To purchase the book, click here. Green Park, a pair of anecdotes: 1. Queen Caroline – ‘What would it cost, Sir Robert, to close the Park to the public?’ Walpole – ‘May it please your Majesty, but Three Crowns –… Read More
The Poetry of Concrete
17 June 2024
The Poetry of Concrete17 June 2024
– Lina Bo Bardi
The following text is reproduced from the catalogue to Lina Bo Bardi: The Poetry of Concrete, an exhibition of the architect’s drawings at the Tchoban Museum for Architectural Drawing, Berlin (1.06.2024 – 22.09.2024). Find more information, and purchase the catalogue, here. I was born in Rome, in Prati di Castello,… Read More
industry & infrastructure theatre sketch plan elevation detail furniture & object design culture