Tag: section

Polyconal System Projected into the Unknown

Polyconal System Projected into the Unknown

– Qing Tang

That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost.[1] I feel like I am about to start writing an unauthorised account of this building, or system, that is presented in front of… Read More

For Peter Salter

For Peter Salter

– Mark Dorrian

1. Very few stories are narrated either to idealise or condemn: rather they testify to the always slightly surprising range of the possible. Although concerned with everyday events, they are mystery stories.[1] In an appreciation of Alison and Peter Smithson, Peter Salter spoke of them as skilled storytellers.[2] In particular,… Read More

The Indeterminate Building: Grimshaw’s ‘Action Factory’ for Herman Miller

The Indeterminate Building: Grimshaw’s ‘Action Factory’ for Herman Miller

– Matt Page

In 1975, following a closed competition during which Norman Foster and James Stirling were also approached, the Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership were invited to design a new factory for the American furniture company Herman Miller. Five years earlier, the company had set up a salesroom and workshop in Bath in the former… Read More

What’s in a Detail? 

What’s in a Detail? 

– Enrico Miglietta

The following text appears in the recently published book The Drawing and the Space: Reflections on 10 Years of Design Research and Education, edited by Thierry Lagrange, Jo Van Den Berghe, Enrico Miglietta, and Liselotte Vroman. The book brings together a decade of work developed through design research and pedagogical… Read More

Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation

Michael Gold: The Dialogue of Representation

– Michael Gold and Dalibor Vesely

The following text, ‘The Dialogue of Representation’ by Dalibor Vesely, was published in People in Architecture, the book featuring the exhibition of work by Michael Gold’s AA Unit 5 students held at the Architectural Association, 4–29 October 1983. Read a response to the exhibition by Peter Wilson here.  Drawing Matter… Read More

Cartography of a Wound

Cartography of a Wound

– Laura del Pino

How do you draw a diamond mine? How do you depict a wound on the terrain, a spiral of extraction so powerful that it reorganises entire territories? On the sheet, the mine becomes a self-contained world—a floating territory of pits, conveyor belts, processing sheds, and housing blocks—but it also acts… Read More

Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings

Protected: Colour in Architectural Drawings

– Editors

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Protected: The Temple

Protected: The Temple

– Clive Aslet

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Blow Up: Dante Bini and His House for a Film Director

Blow Up: Dante Bini and His House for a Film Director

– Will McLean

On July 4th, 1964, in Crespellano on the outskirts of Bologna, Italian architect Dante Bini successfully constructed (in less than three hours) a 12m diameter, 6m high, hemispherical reinforced concrete shell structure using the unique pneumatic formwork of a giant balloon. As a student, Dante Bini had studied and admired… Read More

Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

Collection Guide: Peter Wilson & BOLLES+WILSON

– Editors

Peter Wilson and Julia Bolles are the founding partners of Architekturbüro BOLLES+WILSON. Peter Wilson was born in Australia, he studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the Architectural Association, where he later taught from 1974–1988 (Diploma Unit Master 1980–88). Julia Bolles was born in Münster and graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of… Read More

The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

The Olympic Stadium Project: Le Corbusier & Baghdad

– Editors

In the first three months of 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum presented a small exhibition dedicated to Le Corbusier’s unrealised Olympic Stadium Project for Baghdad. The show was organised by the RIBA, Irena Murray, and Peter Carl, with work loaned from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the Fondation… Read More

My Parish Drawings

My Parish Drawings

– Marina Warner

From an early age I was in love with China and all things Chinese. I don’t know what inspired this passion, but a few years ago I came upon a Rupert Bear cartoon strip and there was the Emperor of China aloft on a flying carpet. I know my father… Read More

Protected: Collection Guide: Carlo Marchionni

Protected: Collection Guide: Carlo Marchionni

– Elizabeth Kieven

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Desire and Pain: John Hejduk’s Thirteen Watchtowers of Cannaregio

Desire and Pain: John Hejduk’s Thirteen Watchtowers of Cannaregio

– Mehrshad Atashi and Lida Badafareh

In his conversation with Don Wall in Mask of Medusa, John Hejduk recalls the programme of the Schatzalp sanatorium in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.  ‘[…] the hero is going up the mountain in a carriage in the deep snow, he sees the dead bodies of those who had died in the sanatorium… Read More

And in the shadows, the section fades

And in the shadows, the section fades

– Charlotte Erckrath

On the black cartridge, a veil of pigments builds up, articulates an edge and fades into the depth. And yet it is the edge that meets me first, together with all the other edges that are layered upon each other. Cascading contrasts of white and black. Or: of brightness and darkness. Now… Read More

Het woonpalazzo – The Residential Palazzo

Het woonpalazzo – The Residential Palazzo

– Nicholas Ray

Open any book by a Dutch architect and you are bound to come across H. P. Berlage—the forefather from whom sprang everything, albeit indirectly, from the Amsterdam School to Der Stijl and who is revered for his contribution at all scales from the details of his buildings to his town… Read More

Arrows

Arrows

– Laurent Stalder

The small drawing that adorns the title page of F. R. S. Yorke’s 1937 study, The Modern House in England, is typ­ical for its time. It shows an aerial perspective, made in thin black lines, of a conventional modern house with all its attributes. Cubic in shape, the house is… Read More

Drawing Research Platform, London, 2025, ENAC Summer Workshop

Drawing Research Platform, London, 2025, ENAC Summer Workshop

– Raffael Baur, Patricia Guaita and Matthew Wells

For a fourth year, Drawing Matter hosted students from ENAC EPFL for a week-long workshop on survey drawings—this time not in a Somerset farmyard, but in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 400 yards east of the archive. The workshop was organised by Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur in collaboration with Drawing Matter,… Read More

Collection Guide: The Viennese School

Collection Guide: The Viennese School

– Iain Boyd Whyte

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

Le Corbusier, Album Punjab, 1951

Le Corbusier, Album Punjab, 1951

– Maristella Casciato

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

Collection Guide: William Butterfield

Collection Guide: William Butterfield

– Nicholas Olsberg

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

Bernat Klein Studio

Bernat Klein Studio

– Neil Gillespie

Travelling north through the Borders over the years, regardless of route, a diversion along a twisting country road north of Selkirk was always on the cards. Navigating a dangerous bend in the road, no time to stop, was rewarded by a fleeting glimpse of an enigmatic presence amongst the trees.… Read More

Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge. The São Salvador de Figueredo Parish Church by Paulo Providência

Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge. The São Salvador de Figueredo Parish Church by Paulo Providência

– Peter Carl

The book Architecture as Poetics of Knowledge is essential reading for anyone interested in Paulo Providência’s renovation of the parish church of São Salvador, Figueredo, 1992-2002, as well as for understanding his singular architectural poetics. A beautifully published suite of drawings (29 pages, including 4 foldouts) and photographs (34 pages) is supported… Read More

Collection Guide: Le Corbusier

Collection Guide: Le Corbusier

– 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