Tag: domestic
Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients
26 October 2022
Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients26 October 2022
In October 1925 Le Corbusier wrote to his client Madame Meyer a remarkable letter about his proposal with Pierre Jeanneret for her villa. It combined drawings with a highly scripted text that carefully guided her through each space, from the entrance to the roof garden. Like the pioneers of early… Read More
Mies van der Rohe and the Universal Space Project
30 August 2022
Mies van der Rohe and the Universal Space Project30 August 2022
I must say that I was far more riveted by another Mies . . . who, in perfect International Style manner continued to insist on architecture and the production of truth as generated by a set of a priori and universalizing laws, and who was caught up in the entirely… Read More
Growing up Modern: Childhoods in Iconic Homes (2021) – Review
13 June 2022
Growing up Modern: Childhoods in Iconic Homes (2021) – Review13 June 2022
What do our birthplaces do to us? Should those homes be considered modernist jewels, the pride of their architects and, sometimes, of their patrons, how would that particular experience be imprinted on their children? Growing up Modern is a highly personal book in which the authors, Julia Jamrozik and Coryn… Read More
Walter Segal, Self-Built Architect (2021) – Review
26 May 2022
Walter Segal, Self-Built Architect (2021) – Review26 May 2022
Given that architect Walter Segal was a Jewish immigrant, born in Berlin to Romanian parents, and a bit of a nomad, it seems unlikely that his best-known work would be confined entirely within London’s boroughs. Resident in the UK for perhaps longer than he had intended, it is in some… Read More
Hélène Binet: The Outsider
19 May 2022
Hélène Binet: The Outsider19 May 2022
a new way of looking at the world Working in my kitchen in the mornings of the 2020 spring.All is silent. Am I silent or is the whole world?In the darkness, you hear better, said Aristotle.In silence and in a closed environment, can you see better? Suddenly the walls of… Read More
Decoding Wittgenstein’s Stonborough Villa
18 January 2022
Decoding Wittgenstein’s Stonborough Villa18 January 2022
God does not reveal himself in the world. The facts all belong only to the task and not to its performance. — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] In the 1980s, the beginning of widespread personal computing, we didn’t buy readymade software like today. Every night found me frantically writing a thousand lines… Read More
Sir John Soane’s Involvement in House Flipping
10 January 2022
Sir John Soane’s Involvement in House Flipping10 January 2022
Any architectural scheme with a lone surviving drawing is likely to be confounding. The lack of graphic context can easily lead to misunderstanding, as was the case for Sir John Soane’s work on 28 Bruton Street. It is my privilege to care for Soane’s drawings collection, and I felt quite… Read More
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House
28 July 2021
Steeling Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight House28 July 2021
The editors were thrilled to receive this response from Neil Jackson to our publication of drawings and literature relating to Stirling & Gowan’s Isle of Wight house. We are always interested in receiving comments and feedback from our readers: editors@drawingmatter.org. In taking the plan of the Stirling & Gowan’s Isle… Read More
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House
21 July 2021
Stirling & Gowan: The Isle of Wight House21 July 2021
– James Gowan, J. M. Richards, Laurent Stalder, James Stirling and Ellis Woodman
This first impetus for this article was provided by Laurent Stalder’s discussion of the sectional perspective drawing for the Isle of Wight house, reproduced here, which led us to J. M. Richards’ seminal essay, and then onward through the literature. In addition, we asked the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Canadian… Read More
The Cottage at Bromley
28 June 2021
The Cottage at Bromley28 June 2021
– Tim Anstey and Mari Lending
Enjoyable finds in archives often emerge between the lines. Inside RIBA Collections, which is organised to form a narrative celebrating architects and their works, we found a gem of modern cultural history, consisting of three architectural plans and four letters (ten pages altogether, eight in transcript, two typed). [1] The… Read More
From Diderot to Tokyo: Mechanical, Subjective and Digital Time
23 June 2021
From Diderot to Tokyo: Mechanical, Subjective and Digital Time23 June 2021
The absolute precision and technical specificity of Diderot’s encyclopaedia plates, particularly those devoted to Horlogerie, mark a critical moment in the transition from speculative to operative science, from the pre-industrial to a modernist ontology of technical instrumentalisation. Here on these pages, artisan craft is ransomed to the immanent logic of… Read More
Roland Simounet: De La Verité en Architecture
24 June 2022
Roland Simounet: De La Verité en Architecture24 June 2022
– Pierre Riboulet
For an artist, ‘getting down to work’ is an instinct carried out spontaneously. […] The first outpouring in the pages of the sketchbook, when thought turns into action, at the meeting point between a project and a site, is so strong sometimes, so commanding, that one has the feeling that… Read More
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