Tag: presentation
Collection Guide: Zaha Hadid
15.12.2025
Collection Guide: Zaha Hadid15.12.2025
– Editors
Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. After studying mathematics at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, from 1968 to 1971, she moved to London in 1972, where she studied architecture at the Architectural Association (AA). It was here that her work began to reference the Russian avant-garde,… Read More
The Lovell Health House: Richard Neutra’s Revolution in Building
04.12.2025
The Lovell Health House: Richard Neutra’s Revolution in Building 04.12.2025
‘Paris, 1927. I was in Lurçat’s studio on the rue Bonaparte looking for the first time at reproductions of the ‘Health House’ of Neutra. We young followers of the new architecture were both admiring and astounded by this signal of a revolution in building.’ Willy Boesiger, introducing Richard Neutra. Buildings and Projects (Zurich:… Read More
Collection Guide: The Viennese School
18.11.2025
Collection Guide: The Viennese School18.11.2025
Drawing Matter’s collection of Viennese drawings from the 19th and early 20th century includes works by Franz Jakob Kreuter, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Schönthal, Emil Hoppe, and Friedrich Ohmann, among others. It was a time of great technological advance, social upheaval, cultural revolt, and changing attitudes to design. Considered as a group, the… Read More
DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling
30.10.2025
DMJ – From Team 4 to Foster Associates: Condensed Narratives and Expanded Storytelling30.10.2025
The work of Team 4 Architects (1963–1967) and Norman and Wendy Foster’s continuation as Foster Associates (1967–1992) is typically examined through their built projects rather than through their extensive drawing repertoire and its imaginative potential. This article unpacks the narrative strategies employed by the two British practices, focusing on the… Read More
Le Corbusier, Album Punjab, 1951
13.10.2025
Le Corbusier, Album Punjab, 195113.10.2025
The following text first appeared in Maristella Casciato, Le Corbusier Album Punjab, 1951 (Zurich: Lars Müller Publications, 2024), 17–21. * Le Corbusier embarked on his first visit to the Indian state of Punjab in 1951 in anticipation of the planning and construction of Chandigarh. Included in his luggage was a notebook, which he… Read More
Building with Writing
02.10.2025
Building with Writing02.10.2025
Stan Allen’s exhibition Building with Writing, an installation documenting 40 years of writing and drawing practice, is currently presented at the Graham Foundation as part of the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial, led by Florencia Rodríguez, Artistic Director, and Igo Kommers Wender, Associate Curator. The exhibition was curated by Michael Meredith, with… Read More
Collection Guide: William Butterfield
25.09.2025
Collection Guide: William Butterfield25.09.2025
William Butterfield was a British architect who trained first as a builder’s apprentice and then as an architect in offices at London and Worcester before opening his own London studio in 1838, continuing in full practice until 1886, and then on a limited scale through to 1897. He was the… Read More
Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City
24.09.2025
Protected: John Pudney writes a prescription for… The Ideal City24.09.2025
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Tolerance
04.09.2025
Tolerance04.09.2025
Too many people have talked about how profoundly the production of architecture has changed in the wake of the digital revolution. Far fewer have noted how architecture has resisted the seductive flourishes of digital production and maintained a dogged continuity with social and historical space. Bricks remain bricky even when… Read More
A Machine is a House for Making a Living
25.08.2025
A Machine is a House for Making a Living25.08.2025
‘Mobility’ has long been a theme in architecture. After observing everyday life in Chinese cities, we became interested in exploring an understanding of mobility, which is not primarily defined by motion, but by the practices of pausing and occupying urban space. The discovery comes from the vehicles used by street… Read More
Melancholy Little Gardens
04.08.2025
Melancholy Little Gardens04.08.2025
Lionel Wallace, the protagonist of H.G. Wells’s The Door in the Wall (1906), was haunted by the vision of an enchanted garden glimpsed in childhood. Having eluded the vigilant and authoritative care of his nursery governess, he found himself wandering aimlessly among the long grey West Kensington roads until he… Read More
Genius loci
24.07.2025
Genius loci24.07.2025
This text was first published in French in d’a | d’architectures (no 322,11 December 2024) as a review of the exhibition Trompe-l’oeil, from 1520 to the present day, which was on show at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris from 17 October 2024 to 2 March 2025. * It is difficult to distinguish between the… Read More
DMJ – A Storyboard for the Fun Palace
07.07.2025
DMJ – A Storyboard for the Fun Palace07.07.2025
Each community, with its own pride, wit and resourcefulness, could make a toy, a microcosm, a small city, a university-of-the-streets, a street theatre, a science playground, an adventure playground for the young kids – a place for time-wasting, gossip, new-arguing, learning, promenading, dancing, eating and drinking, handling tools, paint, machinery…… Read More
Collection Guide: Le Corbusier
26.06.2025
Collection Guide: Le Corbusier26.06.2025
– Maristella Casciato and Nicholas Olsberg
Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887-1865) trained in the fine and decorative arts before undertaking travels and varied apprenticeships to develop his architectural skills, opening a studio and teaching practice in La Chaux in 1912, and moving to Paris in 1917 to work principally as a… Read More
N.B. These Drawings Were From Memory
19.05.2025
N.B. These Drawings Were From Memory19.05.2025
After entering Smart’s Place, and climbing the steep staircase of treads (that become increasingly high and shallow until all the tension in my body was focused on my toes gripping and my weight not leaning back*), I arrived at the space of Drawing Matter where Rosie had indiscriminately laid out… Read More
Hans van der Laan’s Instruments of Thought: Proportion, Architecture, Analogy (2025)
16.05.2025
Hans van der Laan’s Instruments of Thought: Proportion, Architecture, Analogy (2025)16.05.2025
Introduction A steady trickle of works on Dom Hans Van der Laan has appeared in the years since his passing in 1991. Most important among these, Richard Padovan has presented a compelling argument for the significance of Van der Laan’s theory of proportion through a series of texts, including Dom… Read More
Collection Guide: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
13.05.2025
Collection Guide: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe13.05.2025
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
The drawings archive held by Mies at the time of his death was placed in the Museum of Modern Art, and his correspondence and papers at the Library of Congress. They constitute a comprehensive record of his works after the opening of his practice in the United States, especially for… Read More
Les Fantasmes de l’origine: A Reverse Archaeology of the Désert de Retz
07.04.2025
Les Fantasmes de l’origine: A Reverse Archaeology of the Désert de Retz 07.04.2025
Last year, Francis Martinuzzi contacted Drawing Matter after seeing a reproduction of one of his drawings on our website. The drawing was from a project from the submission for his architectural diploma with Jean Faloux under the tutelage of Antoine Grumbach at Unité Pédagogiuqe no. 6 (L’École nationale supérieure d’architecture… Read More
In the Archive: Abattoirs, Boucheries, and Slaughterhouses
31.03.2025
In the Archive: Abattoirs, Boucheries, and Slaughterhouses31.03.2025
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. As architectural typologies, abattoirs, boucheries, and slaughterhouses embody the civilising of animal slaughter; serving as concrete expressions of the culture of animal consumption. Over time, the slaughterhouse has evolved in both its structures and perceptions, from a small-scale, craft-based operation rooted in necessity,… Read More
The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times
27.03.2025
The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times27.03.2025
It’s the sign of a good book about an architect that you want to drop everything and go out to visit, or re-visit, their buildings. And a sure indication of a good book that reproduces many architectural drawings is that you want to be able to pore over the originals… Read More
Name(r)s of the Animals and Drawers
24.03.2025
Name(r)s of the Animals and Drawers24.03.2025
‘Barely Traced, the true drawing escapes.’[1] On a late night while reading Latife Tekin’s Zamansız (Timeless or Without Time)–a tale of love embedded in a lake, unfolded within the obscured semblances of a weasel and an eel–I found myself moving my lips, whispering: ‘Frii-iii-er-frii-ii-frii’. As I read the words printed on the paper, I… Read More
Collection Guide: Aldo Rossi
20.03.2025
Collection Guide: Aldo Rossi20.03.2025
– Editors and Nicholas Olsberg
Aldo Rossi started as a painter, working in the tradition and model of Mario Sironi, whose metaphysical landscapes echo throughout his later work. Although his architectural career commenced with writing, editing and teaching, drawing—especially drawing with colour—remained the principal means to explore and communicate his ideas, and to evoke the… Read More
This is Tomorrow
02.12.2025
This is Tomorrow 02.12.2025
– Tess McCann
The following text is excerpted from the catalogue of the exhibition Theo Crosby: One Hundred Lives, which is on view at Osh Gallery London until the 11th December 2025. Curated by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and researcher Tess McCann, the exhibition focuses on the life and work of Theo Crosby, one of the founding… Read More
theoretical & imaginary exhibition sketch exhibition design presentation