Tag: religion

The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto (2023) — Review

The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto (2023) — Review

Charles Howell

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

Hans Hollein & Spiritual Expression in Architecture

Hans Hollein & Spiritual Expression in Architecture

Charles 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

Capilla Pajaritos

Capilla Pajaritos

Alberto Cruz

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

Frank Lloyd Wright: Memorial to the Soil

David G. De Long

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

William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations

Nicholas Olsberg

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.

Hardman & Co.

Sarah James

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

‘A free composition of bodies’: the Härlanda Church

Peter Celsing

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

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