Tag: elevation
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 3
10 October 2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 310 October 2024
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
23 September 2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 123 September 2024
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
Manufacturers Trust Bank
9 July 2024
Manufacturers Trust Bank9 July 2024
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
5 July 2024
Sydney’s Infill Facades5 July 2024
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
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto
10 June 2024
Lapo Binazzi: Casa a Diacceto10 June 2024
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
14 March 2024
The Animated Wall: A Fragile Vigour14 March 2024
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
8 March 2024
Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives (2023) — Review8 March 2024
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.
29 February 2024
Unveiling the Enigma: Jan Henriksson’s Örebro Riksbank, 1987.29 February 2024
– 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
19 January 2024
DMJ – Pencils, Computers, Cameras19 January 2024
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’
15 December 2023
Schmitz and Drévet: The Egyptian Pavilions at the 1867 ‘Exposition Universelle’15 December 2023
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
20 November 2023
The ‘indispensable ingredients of sublimity’: Smirke and Papworth’s Designs for the Wellington Testimonial20 November 2023
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
John Hejduk’s Bye House: An Object in the Landscape
29 June 2023
John Hejduk’s Bye House: An Object in the Landscape29 June 2023
– 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
2 May 2023
Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop2 May 2023
– 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
26 April 2023
Peter Wilson: Ponte dell’Accademia26 April 2023
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
Shed for Carolyn
26 January 2023
Shed for Carolyn26 January 2023
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
12 January 2023
The ESB’s New Clothes12 January 2023
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
7 October 2022
Fronts and Faces7 October 2022
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
3 October 2022
fala: comprehensive3 October 2022
– 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
12 September 2022
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle12 September 2022
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
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
The Future of the Past: The ‘Round Church’, Cambridge
9 August 2024
The Future of the Past: The ‘Round Church’, Cambridge9 August 2024
– 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
Perspective DMC section elevation survey interior