Tag: religion

Gothic Sublime

Gothic Sublime

Sonny Evans

For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More

Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral in Brasília

Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral in Brasília

Ciro Miguel

For the past two years, our Writing Prize has attracted a large number of thoughtful texts from participants all over the world. This year we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to sponsor one of their three writing prize categories. The Drawing Matter category, titled ‘Architecture and Representation’, invited entrants to… Read More

Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients

Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients

Paul Clarke

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

Gurdwara

Gurdwara

Ekam Singh

Sikhism is the fifth-largest organised religion in the world. The gurdwara (a door to the guru, a teacher), sometimes referred to as the Sikh temple, is a place of worship for those of the Sikh faith. As a typology, it is under-explored in architectural academia – thought to be a… Read More

Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue

Power & Public Space 3: Manuel Herz – Babyn Yar Synagogue

Matthew Blunderfield and Manuel Herz

Power & Public Space is a podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. You can find the full podcast series here. Or listen now: Last year the Swiss practice Manuel Herz Architects completed a wooden synagogue West of Kyiv at Babyn Yar, the site of one… Read More

The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves

The Anatomy of the Architectural Book: Magical Moves

André Tavares

In 1586 Domenico Fontana completed the extraordinary task, commissioned by Pope Sixtus V, of moving the Vatican obelisk. The structure was said to have a ‘mysterious magic of an unknown civilization’, accepted by Christians due to the belief that it had witnessed the martyrdom of Saint Peter. In this text, André… Read More

William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England

William Dickinson’s Pocketbook: Rethinking Drawing & practice in Early C18th England

Elizabeth Deans

During the upheavals of the Civil War, Westminster Abbey had functioned as the church of the state for the Commonwealth. Upon the Restoration of Charles II, the Abbey resumed its historic role as the coronation church for English monarchs. [1] Parliament voted towards restoring the fabric, reinstituting its monarchical function… Read More

The Iterative Power of Architecture’s Absence

The Iterative Power of Architecture’s Absence

Peter Sealy

In 1991, the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron prepared a submission with the artist Remy Zaugg for the Berlin Morgen (‘Berlin Tomorrow’) exhibition organised by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. By surrounding Berlin’s Tiergarten with four new buildings, they proposed to restructure the park – then perceived as… Read More

Entering the Imperial Palace

Entering the Imperial Palace

Will Jennings

‘What a subject for John Martin!’ exclaimed a passer-by, as the hungry flames flickered up York Minster. Maybe they had in mind his apocalyptic painting The Fall of Nineveh, exhibited that same year at the Western Exchange on Old Bond Street and reproduced widely as a mezzotint print. Unbeknown to… Read More

Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life (2021): Review and Excerpts

Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life (2021): Review and Excerpts

Caroline Voet

The new monograph Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life has arrived, published by ArkDes and Park Books to accompany the exhibition that opened in Stockholm in October 2021 curated by ArkDes director Kieran Long with scenography by Caruso St John Architects (open until August 2022). As an excellent preparation… Read More

The Pursuit of Gothic

The Pursuit of Gothic

Rosemary Hill

William Gilpin notoriously suggested that the ruins of Tintern Abbey could be improved by ‘a mallet judiciously used’. [1] The next generation saw in the architecture of the Middle Ages something more than an assortment of ornamental landscape features, but it did not begin to understand it. Uvedale Price, whose… Read More

Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church

Peekaboo! Stanford White and the Mystery Lantern for Madison Square Presbyterian Church

H. Horatio Joyce

Up until the turn of the twentieth century architectural renderings tended to be created for clients early in the design process to give them an idea of how a proposed building would look. At that point however they began to be used more widely for publicity purposes as well, thanks… Read More