Tag: religion
C.S. Peach and the Cruciform Design of the Cathedral
5 April 2024
C.S. Peach and the Cruciform Design of the Cathedral5 April 2024
In view here is a startling watercolour by Charles Stanley Peach, titled Plan of a Church Constructed on Divine Principles (1910)—his pictorial articulation of the cruciform layout of the Christian Cathedral. Architectural aspects are overlayed upon two images of Jesus. The first with his arms splayed wide, hands pinned to… Read More
The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto (2023) — Review
26 January 2024
The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto (2023) — Review26 January 2024
There is an ongoing debate within the field of theology and the arts concerning to what degree ‘theology’ must guide the discussion. Those on one side of the divide argue that unless the terms are clearly staked out within traditional discourses and literature in theology, we do not know what… Read More
Capilla Pajaritos
24 August 2023
Capilla Pajaritos24 August 2023
The following text was written by Alberto Cruz as an account of the project for a small chapel outside of Santiago (1952–3; first published in Spanish in 1954). It describes an unfolding process of design, framed around the guiding principles of observation, act, and, form—the key tenets of Cruz’s architectural… Read More
Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil
31 July 2023
Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil31 July 2023
The renderings for Frank Lloyd Wright’s unbuilt Memorial to the Soil (1936) show the project’s incorporation of earth berms as a major component of its design. In a sense, the earth itself became architecture. About his design, as inscribed on the pencil drawing above, Wright wrote that the project was… Read More
William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations
10 July 2023
William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations10 July 2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. The town of Torquay dates from the days when… Read More
Hardman & Co.
9 June 2023
Hardman & Co.9 June 2023
My interest in seeing the Hardman & Co. drawings at Drawing Matter was quite personally motivated as I feel a connection to the company. Partially, because I come from Birmingham where the company was based, and because I visited the studios informally in the 1980s with my parents. I was… Read More
‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church
30 May 2023
‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church30 May 2023
Peter Celsing won the competition to design the Härlanda Church, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1952, and the church was completed seven years later in 1959. The design of the project is a fragmented list of reflections by the architect in the account reproduced below—which was first drafted on receipts from the… Read More
Gothic Sublime
1 December 2022
Gothic Sublime1 December 2022
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
30 November 2022
Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral in Brasília30 November 2022
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
26 October 2022
Drawing Conversations: Letters to Clients26 October 2022
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
1 September 2022
Gurdwara1 September 2022
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
Hans Hollein & Spiritual Expression in Architecture
22 September 2023
Hans Hollein & Spiritual Expression in Architecture22 September 2023
– C.M. Howell
The defining characteristics of modern architecture took shape against a host of disorientating shifts in the 19th century. On the theoretical side, the instantiation and development of aesthetics as an autonomous realm strained a sacred harmony between beauty, truth, and goodness. On the practical side, technological, social, and cultural advancements… Read More
religion DMC theoretical & imaginary