Tag: elevation

Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 3

Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 3

Nicholas Olsberg

This post concludes Nicholas Olsberg’s series on William Butterfield’s Heath’s Court project, the text of which is included in his new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. ‘Sounding corridors’: entry and sequence The driveway brings us into a… Read More

Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 1

Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 1

Nicholas Olsberg

William Butterfield’s architectural practice, spanning the entire Victorian era, is the focus of Nicholas Olsberg’s new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024.  Over the next three weeks, Drawing Matter will reproduce a chapter within The Master Builder that focuses… Read More

The Future of the Past: The ‘Round Church’, Cambridge

The Future of the Past: The ‘Round Church’, Cambridge

Nikolaus Pevsner

The war to restore to churches ritual and at the same time architectural dignity was waged by one man and one society, the man being a fervent convert to Catholicism, the society calling itself Catholic too, but meaning what is called Anglo-Catholic. They operated independently, but appreciated one another. The… Read More

Manufacturers Trust Bank

Manufacturers Trust Bank

Janet Parks

When one thinks of Manufacturers Trust Company and New York City architecture, the first image that comes to mind is Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill’s international style bank building on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street from 1954. By that year, SOM with Gordon Bunshaft as a design partner were the architects… Read More

Sydney’s Infill Facades

Sydney’s Infill Facades

Ellie Skinner

This survey intends to draw and identify the material and facade arrangements of office buildings in Sydney. Built between 1950 and 1980, the selected buildings are examples of a certain type of post-World War II city infill fabric, characterised by their 4 to 16-storey building heights, shared party walls, fine-grain… Read More

The Poetry of Concrete

The Poetry of Concrete

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

Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto

Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto

Beatrice Lampariello

The design of Casa a Diacceto responds to the principle of ‘discontinuity’ theorised by Lapo Binazzi at the beginning of the 1970s: architecture can only be thought of and realised in fragments and pieces, there is no longer a coherent unity. The pieces are never invented, but are taken from… Read More

The Animated Wall: A Fragile Vigour

The Animated Wall: A Fragile Vigour

Saar Meganck

This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. A… Read More

Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives (2023) — Review

Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives (2023) — Review

Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Geoffrey Bawa, the Sri Lankan architect who died in 2003 at 83 years old in his native Columbo, has been justly celebrated for the skill with which he integrated modern architectural forms and materials into the landscapes and built environment of Sri Lanka and Bali. Although he was often labelled… Read More

Unveiling the Enigma: Jan Henriksson’s Örebro Riksbank, 1987.

Unveiling the Enigma: Jan Henriksson’s Örebro Riksbank, 1987.

Felicia Liang and William Wikström

Jan Henriksson playfully crafted an evocative scenography for the financial world of the 1980s, deviating from the pursuit of uniformity with various forms that break free as autonomous figures within a larger context. Two of Henriksson’s drawings for the Central Bank, Örebro Riksbank exemplify his unique position in 20th-century Swedish… Read More

DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras

DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras

Ahmed Belkhodja

Is distance the raw material of architecture? The early work of Itsuko Hasegawa seems to address this question. In her own words, these projects allowed human beings and architecture to ‘come close and react to each other’, by setting up ‘long distances’. She developed an array of representation techniques through… Read More

Schmitz and Drévet: The Egyptian Pavilions at the 1867 ‘Exposition Universelle’

Schmitz and Drévet: The Egyptian Pavilions at the 1867 ‘Exposition Universelle’

Anja Segmüller

The 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle was one of the most frivolous and lavish events in late-19th-century European history. Erected along the Champs-de-Mars, it encompassed a huge, covered arena surrounded by dozens of pavilions and gardens.[1] It was conceived by Napoleon III to showcase of industrial and technological progress, to promote… Read More

The ‘indispensable ingredients of sublimity’: Smirke and Papworth’s Designs for the Wellington Testimonial

The ‘indispensable ingredients of sublimity’: Smirke and Papworth’s Designs for the Wellington Testimonial

Colum O'Riordan

In 2001, the Irish Architectural Archive (IAA) acquired at auction an item described in the catalogue as ‘Architectural Drawing, possibly by Robert Smirke, of Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park’. The unsigned, undated drawing is a perspective view of an obelisk, the base of which is a four-faced distyle Doric temple. This… Read More

Jérôme-Charles Bellicard: Metamorphoses

Jérôme-Charles Bellicard: Metamorphoses

Janine Barrier

Jérôme-Charles Bellicard’s drawing, while illustrating one of the poems of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, reveals a true picture of the progress of architecture. The transformation of Philemon’s and Baucis’ humble cottage, as required by Jupiter, which unfurls before our very eyes, proclaims that in 1769, the metamorphosis of the primitive hut at… Read More

John Hejduk’s Bye House: An Object in the Landscape

John Hejduk’s Bye House: An Object in the Landscape

Stan Allen and Marina Correia

‘Life has to do with walls; we are continuously going in and out back and forth and through them; a wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the thing we’re always transgressing, and that is why I see it as the present, the most surface condition.’ — John Hejduk[1] The series… Read More

Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh

This audio recording documents a workshop on architects’ drawings exploring the relationship between form, space and programme. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live… Read More

Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia

Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia

Adrian Hawker

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

Drawing Construction: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Drawing Construction: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh

This audio recording documents a workshop on construction drawings by architects architects and designers. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live in the Drawing… Read More

Shed for Carolyn

Shed for Carolyn

George Gibbs

The drawing shown below was highly commended in the Working Drawing Award of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2022. The Working Drawing Award is a special category within the exhibition that celebrates the role of drawing within architecture, design and making processes. Context Shed for Carolyn was a project to rehabilitate… Read More

The ESB’s New Clothes

The ESB’s New Clothes

Colum O'Riordan

In 1965 sixteen late-eighteenth-century houses on the east side of Fitzwilliam Street Lower, Dublin were demolished. They had served as headquarters of the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) and in their place was to be a new company HQ, a 1961 competition-winning scheme by the partnership of Sam Stephenson and Arthur… Read More

Fronts and Faces

Fronts and Faces

Lera Samovich

The paper is cut without measuring. Rulers and set squares are neglected. Scissors are preferred over cutters and cutting mats. Circles are traced from nearby cups and glasses. The lines are never quite parallel. The edges are askew and the angles are uncertain. Alignments, perfect geometries and round numbers are… Read More

fala: comprehensive

fala: comprehensive

fala

This is the second of eight articles in which the partners at fala examine different approaches to drawing and imagery within their practice as designers. Normally, a project is depicted through a series of plans, sections, elevations, and some axonometric drawings, perhaps – every aspect of it explained and documented. We… Read More

Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle

Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle

Francesco Paini

This drawing is a print of a hand drawing I made eighteen years ago on a roll of tracing paper. The original drawing, made with rapidograph pens and a pencil, is now lost. Last month this blueprint was moved to Drawing Matter’s archive. Drawing Matter asked me to explain why… Read More

Sir John Soane’s Involvement in House Flipping

Sir John Soane’s Involvement in House Flipping

Frances Sands

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