Tag: student work
The First Exercise, One Door and One Window
1 June 2023
The First Exercise, One Door and One Window1 June 2023
In 2003, at the troubled age of eighteen, I started a Bachelor’s degree in Interior Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. The first semester was a disappointment, a disaster even. The extremely hierarchical and academic system in Italy was terribly discouraging for creativity and questioning. By raising your hand to… Read More
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle
12 September 2022
Ulmer House Extension Proposal: Baumschlager & Eberle12 September 2022
This drawing is a print of a hand drawing I made eighteen years ago on a roll of tracing paper. The original drawing, made with rapidograph pens and a pencil, is now lost. Last month this blueprint was moved to Drawing Matter’s archive. Drawing Matter asked me to explain why… Read More
Design Starts: Loughborough School of Architecture at Shatwell Farm
3 May 2022
Design Starts: Loughborough School of Architecture at Shatwell Farm3 May 2022
The following is an account of a visit to Drawing Matter in March 2022 made by Benjamin Machin and his students at the Loughborough School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering – Alina Abdulwahid, Nyewuna Amadi, Jemima Dabell, Beckie Downs, Lewis Foster-Jeapes, Will Jones, Will Mennell, Danielle Riley, Joe Tolley,… Read More
Movements of the Drawing Hand
8 December 2021
Movements of the Drawing Hand8 December 2021
How can you study the movements of the drawing hand? Although completed drawings can be interpreted, much the same way graphologists analyse the sequencing and flow of handwriting, can we see an architecture in the movements of the drawing hand? Can we be inside a drawing, and witness, as paper… Read More
Siza at sixteen
10 July 2020
Siza at sixteen10 July 2020
– Manuel Montenegro and Álvaro Siza
Pouco a pouco, quase sem dar por isso, o carvão começou a não partir, o papel a não manchar, o miolo de pão a manter a plasticidade, o fôlego a aumentar. E a confiança. Slowly but steadily, unwittingly, the lead began to not break, paper to not stain, the bread… Read More
Colin Rowe: Piazza Augusto Imperatore (1995)
5 March 2020
Colin Rowe: Piazza Augusto Imperatore (1995)5 March 2020
– Colin Rowe, 1995. Excerpted from Colin Rowe, As I Was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Alexander Caragonne (London: MIT Press, 1996).
Origins in Translation
20 January 2020
Origins in Translation20 January 2020
Broken bits of ancient architecture piled up in the foreground of a printed page is a topos in the canon of architectural publications. An early example takes place in the frontispiece of Sebastiano Serlio’s book on antiquities. Produced for the first edition of the third book, written in Italian and published in… Read More
ETH Zurich: Casting the Cornice in Ticino
8 January 2020
ETH Zurich: Casting the Cornice in Ticino8 January 2020
– Emma Letizia Jones and Erik Wegerhoff
From the fifteenth century onwards, the Swiss region of Ticino was famous for its stuccatori – the skilled decorative plaster workers that migrated down to Italy in search of work ornamenting the great palaces and churches of the Renaissance. Further generations of these craftsmen made their way over the Gotthard pass to… Read More
Drawings’ Conclusions
8 February 2018
Drawings’ Conclusions8 February 2018
The Campo Marzio project had its origins in a series of drawings done as far back as 1979, when I was a student at Cooper Union. I entered Cooper as a transfer student with a BA already in hand. I was originally placed in second year, but after a semester… Read More
Shatwell DrawingScape
29 January 2018
Shatwell DrawingScape29 January 2018
This year a group of 12 students from the Intermediate School at the Architectural Association, London, are developing proposals for the Shatwell site. They take inspiration from the Drawing Matter collection to create exhibition spaces to display and celebrate the culture of drawing. The work ranges from speculative interpretations of… Read More
Notes on the 2017 Summer School
19 August 2017
Notes on the 2017 Summer School19 August 2017
– Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed
Drawing, Making, Thinking ‘Working in philosophy, like work in architecture in many respects, is really more a working on oneself. On one’s own interpretation. On one’s way of seeing things, (and what one expects of them).’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Diary, 1931 Nana Biamah-Ofosu: In Wittgenstein’s words I recognise my own pursuit… Read More
Enric Miralles: La Gran Casa
22 July 2017
Enric Miralles: La Gran Casa22 July 2017
Few projects better represent Enric Miralles’ first stance towards architectural drawing than his own final degree project, La Gran Casa (The Large House), which he worked on with Marciá Codinachs and submitted to the Barcelona School of Architecture in 1978. Seven drawings, each about the size of a bed sheet (118.80 × 237.60 cm), define… Read More
A Space / Two Spaces
30 May 2017
A Space / Two Spaces30 May 2017
The following exercise was given by Anthony Vidler as part of a workshop for LSA students on drawing on 31 June 2017. A ‘Ted Talk’ in Drawing Your client desires a space: not too large, not too small. Determine its size to accommodate: Reading Writing Sleeping … Read More
The Town: The Dream of Unity in the 1960s
21 March 2017
The Town: The Dream of Unity in the 1960s21 March 2017
Staying on the theme of images and theoretical propositions from the sixties, the environment of the architectonic avant-gardes was that of the groups thought radical – they were Italian, Austrian, British and American (Archizoom, Superstudio, Archigram and others) and were known for their innovative graphic design and spectacular photomontages which… Read More
Michael Webb
1 February 2017
Michael Webb1 February 2017
In his drawings for the Sin Centre, Michael Webb constantly returns to the parts of the project that are to do with movement – the undulant mechanical escalators and the complex vehicle system through which cars enter and flow through the building on ramps that loop around, cross over and… Read More
Malagueira and Évora, Portugal
19 September 2016
Malagueira and Évora, Portugal19 September 2016
– Cathy Hawley and Hugh Strange
School of Architecture and Landscape, Kingston University This year we have been examining the relationship between the ancient Roman, medieval and baroque city of Évora and the adjacent Malagueira public housing development – some 1100 low-rise units designed by Álvaro Siza from 1977 onwards in the aftermath of the revolution… Read More
High Ground
19 September 2016
High Ground19 September 2016
– Colette Sheddick and Pierre d'Avoine
School of Architecture and Landscape, Kingston University We have researched the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site (DVWHS) over the last three years. This year we investigated the impact of infrastructure on community and landscape. Transport networks and sites of extraction have scarred the English landscape over millennia. The pragmatics of… Read More
Beyond Object-ness, a Good House
19 September 2016
Beyond Object-ness, a Good House19 September 2016
– Florian Beigel and Philip Christou
The Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University In the design research we do in practice and in our discussions with students, we are continuously working with ideas of space. We are not interested in form following function. Firstly it should be a good room,… Read More
Michael Webb: Sin Centre
5 December 2015
Michael Webb: Sin Centre5 December 2015
The first thing you will notice about the Sin Centre, or Entertainments Centre as it was initially called, is that it lacks entertainments. Pour over the plans, but you will find no drawing lines suggesting the presence of a bowling alley or a restaurant or even a theatre. I forgot… Read More
View the action, neck or talk (1965)
4 December 2015
View the action, neck or talk (1965)4 December 2015
All this can, and is meant to happen on the parking ramps of the Sin Centre: couples bring along their own mobile living room and view the action, neck or talk.
A Poetic Peak: Architecture and planning at the AA in the 1930s
16 September 2024
A Poetic Peak: Architecture and planning at the AA in the 1930s16 September 2024
– Editors and John Summerson
In 2022, Drawing Matter acquired nearly 100 drawings by the architect and urban planner Elizabeth Chesterton. Mostly for projects done while studying at the Architectural Association (1933–38), the group includes drawing exercises, such as colour theory, sciography and graphic design, and a wide variety of buildings at different scales, from… Read More
projection (axonometric isometric) student work housing urban form DMC plan