Tag: urban form
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City
12.05.2021
Hans Hollein’s Immunological City12.05.2021
Hans Hollein’s city structures look awry to someone familiar with his retail work. In the time that these drawings were made, Hollein completed his UC Berkeley degree, travelled across the USA, and did an exhibition with Walter Pichler in Austria. His most influential visit was to the Native American pueblos.… Read More
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique
04.03.2021
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique04.03.2021
The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid has served as ‘the image of an absolute beginning’, as Rosalind Krauss affirmed in 1986 in ‘The Originality of… Read More
In Search of an Honest Map
22.02.2021
In Search of an Honest Map22.02.2021
We don’t experience place as maps would have us believe. We might technically exist within the map, an orientation marker besieged by the total sum of data, every landmark, park and street swarming around us at all times. But our perspective is only partial – a patchwork of neighbourhoods, structures… Read More
Drawing Sacred Forests and Courtyards in South Benin
29.01.2021
Drawing Sacred Forests and Courtyards in South Benin29.01.2021
The following conversation between the editors of Accattone and Quentin Nicolaï was first published in Accattone 6 (2019). It documents research carried out by Quentin Nicolaï in Abomey, Benin, between January 2014 and June 2018. Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the magazine’s editors for allowing us reproduce… Read More
Malagueira: Conflict Resolution (1983)
04.01.2021
Malagueira: Conflict Resolution (1983)04.01.2021
From my experience at Évora, I believe that participation – neither mystifying nor mystified – implies numerous and inevitable conflicts, conflicts which come out of the project. The general concept for the Malagueira district, the methods, the project itself, have indeed given rise to contradictory commentaries, even before our intervention:… Read More
Startha Éagsula: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid
11.12.2020
Startha Éagsula: O’Donnell + Tuomey on Zaha Hadid11.12.2020
– Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey
Around the time she made this super-skinny scheme for Berlin, Zaha came to Dublin to lecture at the National Gallery. She showed her design for the Taoiseach’s House, breaking out of the walled garden in the Phoenix Park, alongside her breakthrough project for the Hong Kong Peak and other funny… Read More
Aldo Rossi: The First Sketch and the Final Drawing
25.11.2020
Aldo Rossi: The First Sketch and the Final Drawing25.11.2020
The following letter was sent to the Drawing Matter editors by Andrea Leonardi, a member of Rossi’s office for nine years. A few days ago my dear friend Maurizio Diton, sent me an article he wrote for you in October 2019, ‘The Office Copier and Baptism by Colour: Working… Read More
Tree Speech
07.11.2020
Tree Speech07.11.2020
The following text is the fourth of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More
Trees Push Back
03.11.2020
Trees Push Back03.11.2020
The following text is the third of a series of four essays on trees in architectural drawings by Sylvia Lavin. The essays were first published in Log 49 (Summer 2020). Drawing Matter would like to thank the author and the journal’s editors for allowing us reproduce the essays on www.drawingmatter.org.… Read More
Startha Éagsula: Elizabeth Hatz on Frank Lloyd Wright
29.10.2020
Startha Éagsula: Elizabeth Hatz on Frank Lloyd Wright29.10.2020
a vanished gardenthe oriental plan eclipses an obsession with circlesall spaces on their way to evaporateany momentthe terrible weight of void implodes into a dome turned sidewayson its way down, breast-feeding earthmidway of life – garden of deathlight words lift like invisible balloonsthe perspective of cantilevered canopies is relentlessin heavy… Read More
A New Administration Center For Los Angeles (1936)
27.10.2020
A New Administration Center For Los Angeles (1936)27.10.2020
Excerpted from ‘Architect and Engineer’ 1936 January by William Hamilton.
The Empire State Building: Elevators (1931)
13.10.2020
The Empire State Building: Elevators (1931)13.10.2020
The following was first published as ‘The Empire State Building: Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, Architects: VIII. Elevators’, Architectural Forum (January 1931). Drawing Matter would like to thank Nicholas Olsberg for sending us this text. Digital copies of Architectural Forum’s series on the Empire State Building can be found at usmodernist.org.
Superstudio: Monument Interrupted
31.08.2020
Superstudio: Monument Interrupted31.08.2020
The collages of Superstudio’s ‘Continuous Monument’ have always seemed to me like stills from an unseen film, each image framing a part of a wider scenography. Combining the collages does not make the larger reality of the monument any less elusive or fragmentary, akin to the way that remembered dreams… Read More
The Wobbly Line: Asplund, Johansson and the Influence of Tessenow in Sweden 1915–1925
27.07.2020
The Wobbly Line: Asplund, Johansson and the Influence of Tessenow in Sweden 1915–192527.07.2020
There is a drawing in a 1923 issue of the Swedish trade journal Byggmästaren (The Master-Builder). It is part of a presentation of a new three-storey house by the architect Cyrillus Johansson. To illustrate his text the architect has included photos and a drawing of the front elevation and a plan of… Read More
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’
23.07.2020
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’23.07.2020
The unbuilt half-dome (referred to by the architect as the ‘cupula’) at the Quinta da Malagueira is the subject of a protracted design process that has lasted for over four decades. At the start of 2020, Álvaro Siza sent a drawing of the half-dome to Drawing Matter accompanied by letter… Read More
OMA in Scheveningen
22.07.2020
OMA in Scheveningen22.07.2020
Scheveningen is a reef on which different architectonic and urban visions have run ashore. – Rem Koolhaas [1] What a surprise to see this 40 year old drawing! I made it as a young collaborator of OMA in Rotterdam in 1982. It is an analytic sketch in ink and color… Read More
A Glasgow Effect
17.07.2020
A Glasgow Effect17.07.2020
I draw and make dens to counter the weather of Scotland and the urban dislocation that I experienced from growing up in Glasgow, a city that suffered disproportionately from devastating post-war planning policy and the imposition of industrial modern architecture. The consequences of this are described by the medical term… Read More
Venice Biennale (1985)
14.07.2020
Venice Biennale (1985)14.07.2020
The third edition of the Venice Biennale in 1985, ‘Progetto Venezia’, directed by Aldo Rossi, had two major themes: the priority given to the moment of planning and the comparison with the Venetian landscape. For the 1985 exhibition, architects were invited to display their designs for the ‘requalification or the… Read More
The Conservative (1941)
06.07.2020
The Conservative (1941)06.07.2020
All along the wide stony high street of Chipping Campden one is aware of stopped clocks. Time has been strenuously and persistently defied – almost successfully. Even the public telephone box – after a short struggle with the Post Office – has been allowed to wear the protective colouring of… Read More
Fresh and Surprised
02.07.2020
Fresh and Surprised02.07.2020
Indische Buurt is a suburban area at the eastern edge of Amsterdam that is rich with diverse ethnicities, building ages and spatial experiences. The streets are named after islands and, as a territory historically built upon reclaimed land, there is an overriding feeling of an archipelago: islands that are places… Read More
Lauretta Vinciarelli: Homogeneous and Non-Homogeneous Grids
11.03.2021
Lauretta Vinciarelli: Homogeneous and Non-Homogeneous Grids11.03.2021
– Rebecca Siefert
The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid is loaded with symbolism and history: it is emblematic of origins, order, systems, utopias and dystopias, and the inevitable susceptibility… Read More
theoretical & imaginary urban form DMC projection (axonometric isometric) competition