Tag: DMC

Polyconal System Projected into the Unknown

Polyconal System Projected into the Unknown

– Qing Tang

That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost.[1] I feel like I am about to start writing an unauthorised account of this building, or system, that is presented in front of… Read More

Protected: Mark Fisher: The Wall for Pink Floyd

Protected: Mark Fisher: The Wall for Pink Floyd

– Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Collection Guide: Alberto Ponis

Collection Guide: Alberto Ponis

– Editors

Alberto Ponis was born in the small port suburb of Nervi in Genoa, in 1933. He was the son of Mario A. Ponis, who owned a textile production company called MITA, which introduced him early on to many Italian artists and designers of the 20th century. The company had worked… Read More

Building a Site: Between Tradition and Modernity – Asplund’s Summerhouse in Stennäs

Building a Site: Between Tradition and Modernity – Asplund’s Summerhouse in Stennäs

– Mafalda Ribeiro

In 1936, four years before his death, Erik Gunnar Asplund designed his own house on a site with unique characteristics, irregular topography, and rocky outcrops. Known as the summerhouse in Stennäs, it remains a timeless architectural case study. The house embodies an architectural idea, a distinct approach to the tenets… Read More

DMJ – Notes on Derek Boshier 

DMJ – Notes on Derek Boshier 

– Lucas Zurdo

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

The Analogous City: Panel

The Analogous City: Panel

– Aldo Rossi

Having been asked to write about the panel exhibited at the Venice Biennale—entitled The analogous city, a joint work carried out with my friends Eraldo Consolascio, Bruno Reichlin and Fabio Reinhart—it is worthwhile, I feel, posing a few general questions that arise prior to experiments or results of this kind.… Read More

Reclaiming the Visual in Architectural Theory

Reclaiming the Visual in Architectural Theory

– Manfredo di Robilant

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

Collection Guide: John Ruskin

Collection Guide: John Ruskin

– Editors

Drawing Matter holds a mineral collection compiled by John Ruskin for the St David’s Boys’ Preparatory School in Reigate, Surrey. The school later relocated to Stone House in Broadstairs and the mineral collection moved with it. Donated in 1883, the specimens were chosen from Ruskin’s personal collection, yet his idea… Read More

Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation

Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation

– Michael Gold and Dalibor Vesely

The following text, ‘The Dialogue of Representation’ by Dalibor Vesely, was published in People in Architecture, the book featuring the exhibition of work by Michael Gold’s AA Unit 5 students held at the Architectural Association, 4–29 October 1983. Read a response to the exhibition by Peter Wilson here.  Drawing Matter… Read More

BOLLES+WILSON: Drawing Towards Building (Exhibition + Talk)

BOLLES+WILSON: Drawing Towards Building (Exhibition + Talk)

– 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

Collection Guide: Cedric Price

Collection Guide: Cedric Price

– Editors

Cedric Price (1934–2003) studied architecture at Cambridge University before receiving his diploma from the Architectural Association (AA) in 1957. He went on to teach at the AA and worked in the offices of Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun before founding his own practice in 1960.  Though the majority of Price’s… Read More

The Creative Potential of Archival Boundaries

The Creative Potential of Archival Boundaries

– John Walter

This unknown eighteenth-century French textile sample pattern book is an intriguing addition to the Drawing Matter collection. Is it architecture, or is it here through a taxonomic error? Either way, how should we approach reading it within this architectural context? The book opens to roughly A3 in format, and each… Read More

Collection Guide: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Collection Guide: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

– Martin Bressani

The French Neo-Gothic architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) was one of the defining figures of nineteenth-century architecture worldwide. He transformed the restoration and interpretation of medieval monuments, championed structural rationalism, and reinvented drawing and publishing as tools for disseminating architectural knowledge. By the time of his death, he had become the… Read More

Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings

Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings

– Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Protected: The Temple

Protected: The Temple

– Clive Aslet

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

– Editors

Peter Wilson and Julia Bolles are the founding partners of Architekturbüro BOLLES+WILSON. Peter Wilson was born in Australia, he studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the Architectural Association, where he later taught from 1974–1988 (Diploma Unit Master 1980–88). Julia Bolles was born in Münster and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of… Read More

Invented from Copies

Invented from Copies

– Neil Bingham

In 1980, Fred A. Stitt, the doyen of American authors of handbooks on the technical and managerial aspects of architectural practice, defined the distinction between drawing and copy drafting (to use the American spelling of draughting) in uncompromising terms: Drawing is an originating process: a creative, aesthetic, and problem-solving process.… Read More

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove – La maison où j’ai grandi

Trevor Dannatt: St Mary’s Grove – La maison où j’ai grandi

– Adrian Dannatt

This is the eighth and concluding part of Adrian Dannatt’s series of reflections on his family home, frequently remodelled and extended over 45 years from 1955, by his father, the architect Trevor Dannatt. Read the introduction to the series here. * Curtains The newly restored house appeared, on the cover no… Read More

Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium

Owen Luder: Sunderland Stadium

– Owen Hopkins

Apart from the extraordinary dynamism of the composition, one of the most striking things about this drawing of Owen Luder’s design for a new stadium for Sunderland A.F.C. is that the people heading towards the turnstiles aren’t wearing red and white. Indeed, the figures are not your usual football fans—today,… Read More

The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

– Editors

In the first three months of 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum presented a small exhibition dedicated to Le Corbusier’s unrealised Olympic Stadium Project for Baghdad. The show was organised by the RIBA, Irena Murray, and Peter Carl, with work loaned from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the Fondation… Read More

Protected: The Drawing as a Site of Absence

Protected: The Drawing as a Site of Absence

– Francesca Hughes

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Siza on Paper (Exhibition + Talk)

Siza on Paper (Exhibition + Talk)

– Editors

On Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March, Drawing Matter presented an exhibition of drawings by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza. The exhibition focused on Siza as a designer of public housing after the Carnation Revolution (1974) and his approaches to drawing. At the centre of the exhibition were three housing… Read More

Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing

Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary: Architectural Drawing

– Niall Hobhouse

The following text is one of the entries included in the book Provenance in Architecture, A Dictionary (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2025) edited by Uwe Fleckner and Mari Lending. The book, presented in the form of a dictionary, examines architectural provenance across 101 key concepts, from acquisition to will. Each… Read More

Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter

Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter

– 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