Tag: section
Architecture’s Mirror Stage
26 February 2021
Architecture’s Mirror Stage26 February 2021
Mirrors and mirrored glass, perhaps the most characteristically postmodern of surface treatments, were not only a material choice but also emblematized a turn inward toward what Sylvia Lavin has taken to calling ‘architecture itself.’ As the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan might have put it, it was at this moment that modernist… Read More
Re-presenting the Rococo
24 February 2021
Re-presenting the Rococo24 February 2021
In October 2017, I travelled to the outskirts of Munich to spend three days in the company of Johann Michael Fischer’s church of St Michael at Berg am Laim with the purpose of presenting it in drawings and photographs. The trip was sponsored by the Drawing Matter Trust and was intended to act as… Read More
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy
9 February 2021
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy9 February 2021
John Britton, a topographer and antiquarian by trade, began preparations to publish a guidebook to John Soane’s house-museum in 1825. The earliest mention of such an endeavour appears in a letter to Soane dated 3 November, in which Britton outlines his desire to ‘produce a vol to surprise the public,… Read More
The Values of Profiles (1951)
8 January 2021
The Values of Profiles (1951)8 January 2021
Provoked by the assertion of rational architecture, the beginnings of modern non-figurative art coincide in time with the exclusion from the world of living forms of cornices and profiles, the most evidently ‘abstract’ elements of ancient architecture. At least two reasons may be relevant to this singular phenomenon: one is… Read More
Collection of Sections
2 December 2020
Collection of Sections2 December 2020
The following drawings and commentaries have been excerpted from Visual Discoveries: A Collection of Sections (Oro Editions, 2020). The publication surveys the use of section drawings in the histories of architecture and other professions, from the 17th century to the present. More information on the book can be found here.… Read More
S.A.U.L. 4th Year: De Rerum Natura / In the Manner Of
13 October 2020
S.A.U.L. 4th Year: De Rerum Natura / In the Manner Of13 October 2020
By Elizabeth Hatz, Gerard Carty and Fionn O'Leary
In the Autumn of 2019, tutors Elizabeth Hatz and Gerard Carty visited the Drawing Matter archive with their fourth-year students from the School of Architecture and the University of Limerick (SAUL). Below is a record of their visit and its place in the context of the fourth-year studio. Tutors interested… Read More
The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh
23 September 2020
The Palace of the Assembly and Museum at Chandigarh23 September 2020
Drawing Matter was introduced to José Oubrerie by Stan Allen after publishing his text Just Begin in July 2020. Oubrerie worked for Le Corbusier in his Atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres from 1957 to 1965. The following text is the first in a series of two transcriptions of informal… Read More
Pan Scroll Zoom 1: Fabrizio Gallanti
30 July 2020
Pan Scroll Zoom 1: Fabrizio Gallanti30 July 2020
This is the first in a series of texts edited by Fabrizio Gallanti on the challenges in the new world of online architectural teaching and, particularly, on the changing role of the drawings in presentations and reviews. In this episode Fabrizio writes of his own experience as a tutor and… Read More
Notes on Port Royal, Jamaica
7 July 2020
Notes on Port Royal, Jamaica7 July 2020
By Paul Cox
My parents Oliver and Jean Cox were devoted ‘Jamaicophiles’, having worked on many projects in the country since the 1960s. One of the most enduring and absorbing was a proposed redevelopment of Port Royal as a renewal and upgrade of the historic city, rebuilding and restoring while making an interesting… Read More
A Smoky Monument / Saunamonumentti
5 June 2020
A Smoky Monument / Saunamonumentti5 June 2020
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
Working with Asplund
29 May 2020
Working with Asplund29 May 2020
By Herbert Korn
Asplund’s office was two floors up in an old building in Regeringsgatan, behind the NK department store. There were civil engineers there and Asplund collaborated with them as well. They worked on regional planning. Asplund’s office was a very smart room, a chapel for meditation you might say. It was… Read More
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics
12 April 2021
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics12 April 2021
By Tom Cookson
It is the unique trait of the section drawing to fragment the singularity of built form, to allow the reading of a building as a series of individual pieces, and thereby delay our innate predilection – at least momentarily – for gestalt. Much like an erratic (in geology, an erratic is a material… Read More
section drawing matter writing prize 2020 nature