Tag: DMC
Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter
07.05.2026
Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter07.05.2026
– João Miguel Couto Duarte and Maria João Moreira Soares
In 1950, Le Corbusier began designing the Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. Le Corbusier wrote that it represented ‘Liberté’ (freedom).[1] Totally free architecture. A veritable phenomenon of visual acoustics. That freedom affected one visitor in 1955: ‘the sacred building stood in the landscape like an extraterrestrial object, leaving… Read More
Protected: Collection Guide: Carlo Marchionni
06.05.2026
Protected: Collection Guide: Carlo Marchionni06.05.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Protected: Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing
01.05.2026
Protected: Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing01.05.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The ‘Typewriter’ Drawing
01.05.2026
The ‘Typewriter’ Drawing01.05.2026
The ‘Typewriter’ drawing is made on brown paper mounted on a black backing, its surface carrying both the mechanical impressions of a typewriter and the analogue traces of a black pen layered above them. But unlike later typewriter drawings, which use typed characters as grids, codes, or proto-digital marks, this… Read More
The Principle of ‘Reach’
27.04.2026
The Principle of ‘Reach’27.04.2026
In the home economics theory of domestic space, a necessary and pivotal condition allowing the homemaker to work out and practice more ‘efficient’ routines, and thereby decrease her domestic drudgery, was the design of home interior. This included the arrangement of the objects of daily use. Conceptualising the space as… Read More
The Open Hand Reloaded
24.04.2026
The Open Hand Reloaded24.04.2026
The above notes are based on a paper first presented at the workshop Long Table Conversation on ‘NonAligned Modernism’ held at the University of Washington in Seattle on October 31, 2025, moderated by Adair Rounthwaite (Art History) and with an introduction by Vikram Prakash (HHF/Architecture). * Maristella Casciato (architect, architectural… Read More
Protected: Collection Guide: Cedric Price
23.04.2026
Protected: Collection Guide: Cedric Price23.04.2026
– Editors
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Vaucher’s Shadows
21.04.2026
Vaucher’s Shadows21.04.2026
It is a curious drawing, one that exudes an almost Magritte-like aroma of the surreal—the kind that depends upon the rendering of a visual-conceptual oxymoron with an extreme degree of realism. The subject has something to do with this, an isolated Ionic capital cut off at the neck from its… Read More
Protected: Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium
20.04.2026
Protected: Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium20.04.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The House Stands Still While Life Moves
17.04.2026
The House Stands Still While Life Moves17.04.2026
The house has a floor sticky like honey; our feet cling to it and we cannot get away from it. The house is a rucksack so huge and full on our shoulders that every movement becomes impossible. The house is an unconditional refuge for those who fear all the mishaps… Read More
Desire and Pain: John Hejduk’s Thirteen Watchtowers of Cannaregio
13.04.2026
Desire and Pain: John Hejduk’s Thirteen Watchtowers of Cannaregio13.04.2026
– Mehrshad Atashi and Lida Badafareh
In his conversation with Don Wall in Mask of Medusa, John Hejduk recalls the programme of the Schatzalp sanatorium in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. ‘[…] the hero is going up the mountain in a carriage in the deep snow, he sees the dead bodies of those who had died in the sanatorium… Read More
Wedging a Shrine
10.04.2026
Wedging a Shrine10.04.2026
This drawing by an unknown author can be appreciated from two different perspectives. On the one hand, it depicts a jinja, a Japanese Shinto shrine. From a historical point of view, the image can be read as an ezu—an illustrated map from the late Edo period (mid-nineteenth century)—featuring premodern calligraphy and the… Read More
Ellis Woodman on James Gowan’s Sketchbooks (Video)
09.04.2026
Ellis Woodman on James Gowan’s Sketchbooks (Video)09.04.2026
In this short film, Ellis Woodman takes us through four sketchbooks used by the Scottish architect James Gowan (1923–2015). The sketchbooks cover three decades of Gowan’s ideas, observations, and designs. As Ellis describes, they are very broad in their range and content; while some work through design problems, others are… Read More
On Cedric Price
02.04.2026
On Cedric Price02.04.2026
Cedric Price’s thinking and work have had a very particular influence on my work, in the sense that some fundamental choices I have made as an architect have been deeply influenced by his philosophy. In this sense, it seems to me that Cedric Price was one of the few architects… Read More
A Taste for Architectural Drawings
01.04.2026
A Taste for Architectural Drawings01.04.2026
The smelling and tasting of historical architectural drawings have been overlooked by scholars as valuable research tools, particularly in matters of dating and authorship. In this short discussion—a foretaste of a future volume, or two, that I intend to write on the subject—I demonstrate that drawings made by architects, including… Read More
Louis Kahn: Sketch for a Mural
30.03.2026
Louis Kahn: Sketch for a Mural30.03.2026
Drawing Matter holds a large number of drawings, prints and other materials relating to a project for an office building in Kansas City designed by Louis Kahn. The project was one of the last that the architect worked on before his death in 1974, and many of the drawings carry… Read More
Working (with) Drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection
27.03.2026
Working (with) Drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection27.03.2026
– Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Maria Mitsoula
The following text was first published in Stoà 14 – SCUOLE, SYLLABUS / SCHOOLS, BRIEF (Autumn 2025). * Drawing Matter and its Collection The Drawing Matter Collection, carefully assembled by collector, curator, and critic Niall Hobhouse over thirty years, comprises around 20,000 objects—including architectural drawings, models, photographs, and sketchbooks, among others—from around the… Read More
Collection Guide: Futurism, Rationalism, and Stile Littorio
26.03.2026
Collection Guide: Futurism, Rationalism, and Stile Littorio26.03.2026
The Drawing Matter collection holds around 70 objects that speak to Italy’s architectural evolution in the early twentieth century. It should be noted that this period was characterised by tremendous stylistic diversity, with movements and groups—often unhappily—coexisting and shifting, ultimately culminating in the dominance of the Stile Littorio. At the… Read More
The Architectural Competition: Shopfront to ‘The Trade’
20.03.2026
The Architectural Competition: Shopfront to ‘The Trade’20.03.2026
Alexander Scott Carter’s winning designs for single and double-fronted W.H. Smith shopfronts form a remote bookend to a troubled time for architectural competitions in Britain. The other arrived approximately 75 years earlier in the form of a satirical drawing produced to open Augustus Pugin’s Contrasts (1836). It too was a… Read More
Protected: James Gowan’s Schreiber House
19.03.2026
Protected: James Gowan’s Schreiber House19.03.2026
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
André des Gachons: Weather Warning
19.03.2026
André des Gachons: Weather Warning19.03.2026
The recent publication, La Veille du ciel: aquarelles météorologiques (Phénomène éditions), one of the most beautiful books published in 2025, gathers together forty years of daily weather reports by André des Gachons on the skies above the small rural commune of La Chaussée-sur-Marne, in eastern France. Des Gachons remained subjective… Read More
The Unperformed: Eisenstein’s Set Design for Heartbreak House
13.03.2026
The Unperformed: Eisenstein’s Set Design for Heartbreak House13.03.2026
The sole drawing by Sergei Eisenstein in the Drawing Matter archive is a set design for a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (1919) from 1922. It is a rare, interdisciplinary confluence of a socialist Irish playwright (Shaw), a Russian filmmaker and theorist (Eisenstein), and a radical theatre maker… Read More
Sam Jacob: On Collage (Talk, Workshop + Exhibition)
12.03.2026
Sam Jacob: On Collage (Talk, Workshop + Exhibition)12.03.2026
– Editors
In early February, Drawing Matter organised a series of public events with the architect Sam Jacob exploring the uses of collage in architectural representations. On the Friday (6 February), Sam gave a talk on his personal interests in collage, weaving a narrative from Richard Hamilton’s Just what is it that… Read More
Protected: The Creative Potential of Archival Boundaries
29.04.2026
Protected: The Creative Potential of Archival Boundaries29.04.2026
– John Walter
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
presentation DMC archive Open Call: Visibility, and the Unseen textile