Writer: Niall Hobhouse

Protected: Buffington & Mies: Skyscrapers on Paper

Protected: Buffington & Mies: Skyscrapers on Paper

Niall Hobhouse

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

On origins and originality

On origins and originality

Niall Hobhouse

The following text by Niall Hobhouse is included in the exhibition catalogue for Begin Again. Fail Better: Preliminary Drawings in Architecture. The exhibition, previously shown at the Kunstmuseum in Olten, opened at EPFL on the 5th of November and will close on the 2nd of December 2024. It includes nearly 100 drawings from… Read More

Quantum Collecting: A Few Principles and Mechanisms for the Acquisition of Architectural Drawings

Quantum Collecting: A Few Principles and Mechanisms for the Acquisition of Architectural Drawings

Niall Hobhouse and Matt Page

Drawing Matter is often asked to contribute to discussions, initiated by public institutions with significant collections of architectural drawings, about what—and what not—to collect. For ourselves, this feels the wrong way round, not least because we have no public mandate and have always resisted formulating (still less, publishing) any sort… Read More

Through a Glass Darkly

Through a Glass Darkly

Niall Hobhouse

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. Since Burckhardt’s discovery of Petra in 1812, Europeans and… Read More

Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Drawing Programme: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh

This audio recording documents a workshop on architects’ drawings exploring the relationship between form, space and programme. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live… Read More

Drawing Construction: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Drawing Construction: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh

This audio recording documents a workshop on construction drawings by architects architects and designers. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live in the Drawing… Read More

Drawing Sites: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Drawing Sites: A Drawing Matter Workshop

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Amy Teh

This audio recording documents a workshop on architects’ drawings in which the site is the designer’s focus. It was delivered by Manuel Montenegro and Niall Hobhouse to Masters students from the School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, and their tutors Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur. The recording was made live… Read More

Lenin’s Tomb, the Second Version

Lenin’s Tomb, the Second Version

Niall Hobhouse and Markus Lähteenmäki

The following email exchange took place between Niall Hobhouse, founder of Drawing Matter, and Markus Lähteenmäki in July 2022. Dear Markus, Came across these here in the archive… from god knows where exactly. Thought you might have something to say – had forgotten that it was originally ‘dummied’ in wood.… Read More

Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter

Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter

Adrian Forty, Niall Hobhouse and Philippa Lewis

This film was recorded in the Drawing Matter archive on the afternoon of Friday 28 November. It records a conversation between Philippa Lewis, Adrian Forty and Niall Hobhouse, about some of the drawings behind Philippa’s new book, Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter (2021). The film was… Read More

Álvaro Siza: Seven Early Sketchbooks

Álvaro Siza: Seven Early Sketchbooks

Niall Hobhouse, Manuel Montenegro and Álvaro Siza

These films were made over four hours on the afternoon of Sunday 25 March 2018 in Álvaro Siza’s studio in Rua do Aleixo outside Porto. I had flown to Portugal that morning with the seven sketchbooks which we were to look through with Manuel Montenegro. Manuel and I had conceived… Read More

68½ degrees, Sverre Fehn and the Nordic Pavilion: Review & Excerpt

68½ degrees, Sverre Fehn and the Nordic Pavilion: Review & Excerpt

Niall Hobhouse

Review By preserving the trees on the site within his pavilion in the Giardini, Sverre Fehn offered Venice an insight into a unique Nordic sensitivity towards nature and the environment. He tempered the harsh Mediterranean sun to evoke the horizontal light of the Baltic through a spectacularly innovative technical design… Read More

Stan Allen’s Situated Objects (2020): Review & Excerpt

Stan Allen’s Situated Objects (2020): Review & Excerpt

Niall Hobhouse

Review Three times a week a package arrives in Somerset with another Practice Monograph, and the generous proposal that we might want to add it to the library at Drawing Matter. This is clearly an old story – somewhere we have a copy of one of John Soane’s endless books… Read More

Grounded: Plans & Planning

Grounded: Plans & Planning

Richard Hall and Niall Hobhouse

The following is part of an email exchange between Niall Hobhouse and Richard Hall in response to Richard’s text on James Gowan and John Hejduk, One Thing Leads to Another. Niall Hobhouse: When you have time, I thought it would be interesting to encourage you to think about why it is… Read More

Seeing, and Disbelieving

Seeing, and Disbelieving

Niall Hobhouse

It is easy enough to say that the analysis of any architectural drawing begins with asking what it is for. But trying to answer this innocent question, which applies equally to the purpose for which the drawing was intended and for which we are now looking at it, presents many… Read More

From a little below and to the right

From a little below and to the right

Niall Hobhouse

There is a characteristic recurrence in Lutyens’ drawings of a quickly sketched oblique perspective in his own hand. Apparently, this is added as an afterthought once the orthogonal image of the building itself has been fully developed elsewhere (sometimes by assistants), and both usually appear on the same sheet. Invariably,… Read More

Gio Ponti: un disegno è un idea

Gio Ponti: un disegno è un idea

Niall Hobhouse

Signora Onvoloni, here is a drawing that might find a place in your cabinet of ideas: ‘a drawing is an idea’ – Gio Ponti, translated by Guido Beltramini [1] All seems simple enough on the face of it, and of course one smiles, just as Gio hoped we might. But… Read More

Gio Ponti: ‘Come for Porchetta’

Gio Ponti: ‘Come for Porchetta’

Niall Hobhouse

The Milanese architect Gio Ponti typically arrived at his office very early in the morning and would use the quiet interlude before his colleagues appeared to write a succession of letters – to friends and associates, to clients and contractors, to his associate editors at Domus or Stile, to his fellow architects Le… Read More

Madelon Vriesendorp

Madelon Vriesendorp

Niall Hobhouse and Madelon Vriesdendorp

Excerpted from Madelon Vreisendop in conversation with Niall Hobhouse, RIBA, 2 July 2018

Siza and the limits of representation

Siza and the limits of representation

Niall Hobhouse

Over the years in which the collection of Drawing Matter has been formed we have come to understand that the most productive discussion of architecture is actually about the precise relationship between the drawing and ‘its’ building. One good rule is that an architect with a powerful idea is always… Read More

Sans Humour?

Sans Humour?

Niall Hobhouse

It seems that architects are too self-conscious – or perhaps in need of being seen as permanently on duty – to portray themselves or what they do with much humour, let alone self-critical caricature. Edwin Lutyens is an honourable exception, even if his self-mockery ultimately becomes a public performance – a… Read More

Le Corbusier: Sketch for the Governor’s Palace, Chandigarh, India

Le Corbusier: Sketch for the Governor’s Palace, Chandigarh, India

Niall Hobhouse

Niall Hobhouse remembers that Jullian de la Fuente, the Chilean architect who worked with Le Corbusier, told him the story of how he came to own the twelve pages (of which one is shown) extracted from Le Corbusier’s sketchbook: In the late 1950s the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal… Read More

without irony 1

without irony 1

Niall Hobhouse

without irony 3

without irony 3

Niall Hobhouse

without irony 2

without irony 2

Niall Hobhouse