Tag: DMC

Cartographies of the Imagination

Cartographies of the Imagination

Kirsty Badenoch and Sayan Skandarajah

Drawing place is illusory. Maps may begin as transcriptions of a worldly order – a semblance of truth and objectivity – but in doing so, become acts of world-building that both belong to and are entirely removed from their starting point. In 2019, we first visited Shatwell Farm in the… Read More

Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church

Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church

H. Horatio Joyce

Up until the turn of the twentieth century architectural renderings tended to be created for clients early in the design process to give them an idea of how a proposed building would look. At that point however they began to be used more widely for publicity purposes as well, thanks… Read More

Hans Poelzig: Decorating the Empty Centre

Hans Poelzig: Decorating the Empty Centre

Hana Nihill

‘Artists such as Poelzig, prevented from building in real life, have been driven to create Expressionist cinema architecture […] But in the long run, pasteboard fantasy creations […] can never be satisfying fodder for the architect; he has an inner urge to conceive and erect buildings in which real people… Read More

Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis

Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis

Charlotte Hart

This study of Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis was made by Pascal Coste (b. 1787 Marseille, France) in 1840 as part of an archeological survey of the Persian City of Persepolis. Through a combination of plan and perspective, Coste portrayed the symmetrical arrangement and elaborate construction of the ancient… Read More

Insignificance 2: Distinction – Polysemy

Insignificance 2: Distinction – Polysemy

Gordon Shrigley

The following texts are excerpted from Gordon Shrigley, Insignificance: A short discourse on the physical and ideational economy of line within architectural representation (Solitude Editions, 1998). Now, twenty years after Insignificance was first published, Gordon Shrigley has revisited the publication for a series of postings on Drawing Matter. Each of these posts connect… Read More

Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva

Evocation of Solemnity: Temple of Minerva

Rodrigo Dominguez

For the curious visitor that approaches the historic remains of the Temple of Minerva Medica in Rome, it will take a lot of effort to contextualize the building as it could have once been. That which before had allowed for a gentle processional approach to the ruin has now been… Read More

Keshi Ghat

Keshi Ghat

Amrutha Viswanath

Seeing is a reaching out, a kind of metaphorical touching that involves one’s whole being and is reciprocal. Amita Singh  If you hadn’t read the title of the drawing, you would have probably guessed that this would have been a riverfront mosque in India. I did too. The courtyards reminding… Read More

Hans Hollein’s Immunological City

Hans Hollein’s Immunological City

Dhruv Mehta

Hans Hollein’s city structures look awry to someone familiar with his retail work. In the time that these drawings were made, Hollein completed his UC Berkeley degree, travelled across the USA, and did an exhibition with Walter Pichler in Austria. His most influential visit was to the Native American pueblos.… Read More

Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)

Eric Gill On Designing War Graves (1919)

Eric Gill

In 1918, when the First World War ended, Eric Gill was in his late forties and completing the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral. He was soon in demand to design and sculpt war memorials. Gill would create simple memorials listing the names of the fallen for both the… Read More

The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish

The Intention of Suspension: Peter Wilson’s Clandeboye Fish

Gabrielle Eglen

A phenomenological reading of ‘bridge’ would not prioritise function (crossing) but this suspended moment. – Peter Wilson [1] A fish out of water, a lady in thought, floating ‘wilderness’. Things first have to be separated from each other so as to be united later on. [2]  Peter Wilson’s drawings of… Read More

Insignificance 1: Discipline

Insignificance 1: Discipline

Gordon Shrigley

The space of the architectural imagination resides within the discourses of line. This space defines the boundaries of a practice of conceptualising the laws of the place [1] whereby through an array of ordinances, the architectural line constitutes ‘the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically and to analyse… Read More

Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing

Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing

Rafael Sousa Santos

The speed of transformation that characterises our contemporality is largely motivated by the development of the newest information technologies. The speed introduced by computation seems to be the promoter of the instability that reaches the conceptions of almost all professional and disciplinary fields since it imposes a pace of change… Read More

Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)

Bulgakov’s ‘Golden City’ (1923)

Cyril Babeev

This text is an excerpt from Mikhail Bulgakov’s series of short vignettes that appeared under the overarching title ‘Golden City’ and were serialised in the Berlin-based Russian migrant ‘Nakanune’ newspaper between 30 September and 14 October 1923. Bulgakov was commissioned to write an account of the first and only All-Russian… Read More

14 Wine Street, Bristol

14 Wine Street, Bristol

Lee Marable

Whilst leafing through the Drawing Matter collection, this drawing from 1885, by architect Henry Crisp, caught my eye. The drawing depicts a new shopfront and facade to be grafted on to the existing structure of 14 Wine Street, Bristol. Initially, the design struck me as remarkably contemporary and I came… Read More

Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness

Nobuo Sekine: Phase of Nothingness

Editors

With thanks to Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this tribute to Sekine written on the first anniversary of the artist’s death (linked here).

Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing

Order and Uncertainty in Architectural Drawing

Luke Tipene

How we look at architectural drawings is an inherently complicated topic. The issue arises from what we understand to appear and disappear on the page. The field of architecture has spent little time talking about what we see (and don’t see) on the surface of the drawing itself. One could… Read More

Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)

Leicester Engineering building: Two Architects (1964)

Ellis Woodman

Filmed in 1964, Ron Parks’ documentary on the newly completed Engineering Department at Leicester catches James Stirling and James Gowan at a moment of professional triumph and personal crisis. Their building was being applauded the world-over – Parks’ film had been commissioned by the American Institute of Architects, to mark its… Read More

Peter Märkli: My Facade Material

Peter Märkli: My Facade Material

Editors

The following quotations are from ‘Mein Stoff für Fassaden (My Facade Material)’, a lecture delivered online by Peter Märkli to open a series of five talks for the Architecture Foundation. The quotations are presented here in a loose fashion, some treated as aphorisms about design, others illustrated with drawings from… Read More

Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics

Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics

Tom Cookson

It is the unique trait of the section drawing to fragment the singularity of built form, to allow the reading of a building as a series of individual pieces, and thereby delay our innate predilection for gestalt. Much like an erratic (in geology, an erratic is a material moved by geologic forces from… Read More

Hans Hollein: From a Distance

Hans Hollein: From a Distance

Robert Crawford

On a page of Hans Hollein’s sketchbook, a cluster of adobe buildings climb slowly and modestly above the horizon, seeming to rise out of the earth. The sketch, produced in 1960 during the Austrian architect’s exploration of the western United States, feels unorthodox for Hollein, whose proclivity for radical, anti-Functionalist… Read More

Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)

Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)

George Eliot

This speech on building – and architects – was made by Adam to Mr Poyser in Chapter 49 of George Eliot’s novel. It was pointed out to us by the Eliot scholar, Dermot Coleman, who added that ‘it is generally a safe bet that views on such matters expressed by Adam… Read More

André Arbus: Details Matter

André Arbus: Details Matter

Anna Healy

These presentation drawings – polished, finished, complete – were drawn by André Arbus in the 1950s. They are of a compact, open-plan apartment. Although they are not design drawings, they reveal a lot about the process of design. They communicate thought and care and suggest many drawings have come before them.… Read More

Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield

Working with Gowan: Housing at East Hanningfield

Paul Notley

The Site Plan was one of the Planning drawings prepared for submission to Chelmsford District Council and Essex County Council. It is A1 size and drawn on Wiggins Teape 112 gram ‘Gateway’ tracing paper. The East Hanningfield job was the first on which ‘A’ sized paper had been used in… Read More

Studio Mumbai’s Tape Drawing

Studio Mumbai’s Tape Drawing

Irfan Safdag

Rain falls from the sky as a five-month monsoon season sweeps across India. Often associated with abundance and blessing, rain is a sign of good prospects, particularly for Southwest Indian farmers who are dependent on rainfall for their crops. The Saatrasta-Mahindra tape drawing embodies the term ‘adapting to place’, as… Read More