Tag: health & leisure

The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh

The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh

Tom Spalding

Anthony Salvin (1799–1881) was a noted English architect of country houses and a pioneer restorer of historic monuments. In the latter sphere, he undertook significant interventions at Windsor and Alnwick Castles and at the Tower of London. For example, he is largely responsible for the way we see the yards… Read More

Casino Royale: Stynen’s unrealised sculpture garden

Casino Royale: Stynen’s unrealised sculpture garden

Emerald Liu

The city council of the seaside town Oostende organised a competition for its new casino-kursaal in 1945, and a design by Antwerp architect Léon Stynen was chosen as the winner the following year. Stynen was a prominent name by that time, having previously designed casinos for Knokke, Chaudfontaine, and Blankenberge.… Read More

Two Early Paintings with OMA

Two Early Paintings with OMA

Zoe Zenghelis

Here, Zoe Zenghelis, painter and founding member of OMA, recalls the making of two paintings now in the Drawing Matter collection. The first, pictured below, is an aerial view of the unbuilt Hotel Therma, and the second is a version of OMA’s entry to the Parc de la Villette competition.… Read More

Shower at Shatwell Farm

Shower at Shatwell Farm

Adam Blencowe

Being a designer and adherent of adhocism – speed, economy, improvisation and learning-as-you-go – the materials I use have a strong influence on the outcome of my work. This completely dovetailed with Niall’s brief: to design and build an outdoor toilet and shower for occasional scholars occupying the library at… Read More

A Smoky Monument / Saunamonumentti

A Smoky Monument / Saunamonumentti

Tuomas Toivonen

Small sauna is part of a peculiar farm, where architecture is important. Sheltered by dense vegetation, the site is located on a steep incline on the edge of a valley grooved by water in a landscape of rolling fields, above the residential building and barnyard of an old dairy farm.… Read More

Calculated Aesthetics

Calculated Aesthetics

Asli Çiçek

The floor plan of the Losone gymnasium (1990–1997) by Livio Vacchini is a computer drawing made through the repetition of four basic elements: a rectangular black solid, and three types of short lines – one vertical and two diagonals in opposite directions. The black solid is copied with equal distance… Read More

What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath

Sarah Handelman

‘The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be,’ recalled Mark Twain in his 1897 Following the Equator. The travelogue was the result of an 1895 lecture tour that Twain, by then 60, had made of the British Empire… Read More

Foster + Partners: CLEVELAND CLINIC HEALTH EDUCATION CAMPUS

Foster + Partners: CLEVELAND CLINIC HEALTH EDUCATION CAMPUS

Norman Foster

Following on from Farshid Moussavi’s curatorial decision to create a display of construction drawings that showcase the ‘full complexity of the different systems and parts of buildings’, I chose this compelling BIM drawing from the Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus project, which suitably illustrates our integrated design approach. Throughout the… Read More

Niall McLaughlin

Niall McLaughlin

Níall McLaughlin

ALZHEIMER’S RESPITE CENTRE, DUBLIN We had six sites to look at and we did a feasibility study for each one. We eventually ended up with one which in many ways is not very satisfactory for people with dementia because it is an eighteenth-century walled garden. But what we did was… Read More

Concrete Beach

Concrete Beach

Stephanie Macdonald

This drawing was made with a chinagraph pen over the course of a holiday afternoon. It started out roughly, as a quick sketch, but time stretched out as more people filled the page. I like using chinagraph as it can be sensitive to great softness and also very dark lines. I like its texture – it is a very… Read More

Narrative Architecture

Narrative Architecture

Nigel Coates

Executed after it opened, this drawing captures the intended vibrancy of one of my first built projects, a café tacked onto the front of a department store in downtown Shibuya. The architectural bricolage of the built space translated well into the mixed media technique of splurged acrylic paint, caked-on oil… Read More

Michael Webb

Michael Webb

Mark Dorrian

In his drawings for the Sin Centre, Michael Webb constantly returns to the parts of the project that are to do with movement – the undulant mechanical escalators and the complex vehicle system through which cars enter and flow through the building on ramps that loop around, cross over and… Read More

A Civic Utopia Exhibition

A Civic Utopia Exhibition

A Civic Utopia: Architecture and the City in France 1765-1837 was curated by Nicholas Olsberg and Basile Baudez, and organised by Drawing Matter Trust in collaboration with The Courtauld Gallery as part of Somerset House’s celebration of the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia. The exhibition considered the place of architecture… Read More

Zünd-Up: ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system

Zünd-Up: ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system

An element in this Viennese collective’s proposal to extend the city into a newly ‘psycho-dynamic’ street and park system, this ‘Cortina-Bob-Bahn’ would have ornamented the gardens of the Prater with a drive-yourself roller-coaster tower some 1500 metres high.

Displaced persons

Displaced persons

Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg

Architects are extraordinarily reluctant to incorporate into their visual descriptions of buildings any evidence that the real subject their structures serve, and around whose activities they are so carefully formulated, is people. Here’s a look at a few of the moments when this unspoken rule has been broken. Distances: Using… Read More