Writer: Matt Page

2024 Architecture Summer School: Translations between drawings and models

2024 Architecture Summer School: Translations between drawings and models

Jesper Authen and Matt Page

Drawing is the act of translating a thought to a mark on the page—where the hand is in conversation with the mind. This conversation is marked by an unbridgeable gap between the idea and the output—sometimes betraying and exposing the thought, and other times surprising you with an unintended vigour… Read More

Protected: Ian Hamilton Finlay at Drawing Matter

Protected: Ian Hamilton Finlay at Drawing Matter

Matt Page

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein

Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein

Matt Page

This text by Matt Page will be included in the exhibition catalogue for Begin again. Fail Better: Preliminary drawings in architecture (and art). The exhibition opens on the 31st May 2024 at the Kunstmuseum Olten, and includes nearly 100 drawings from the Drawing Matter Collection. More information about the exhibition… 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

Fraser Stables: Remembering Architecture 

Fraser Stables: Remembering Architecture 

Matt Page

Fraser Stables speaks quietly through his series Remembering Architecture. There is a staid documentarian quality to his photographs, but not that of architectural photography. When architectural details—the meeting of nature and architecture, light falling on surfaces—are made the focus, the images speak more to a sensitive process of recording moments; and in many… Read More

Drawing Exercises: Design Process

Drawing Exercises: Design Process

Matt Page and Fernando Poeiras

This post is part of a series of Drawing Exercises developed by Fernando Poeiras (ESAD.CR/LIDA) with Drawing Matter. Find the introduction to the series here. The following exercises simulate different aspects of design processes. They refer to drawings from the collection included in the lightbox linked here, but can be… Read More

Drawing Exercises: Creativity

Drawing Exercises: Creativity

Matt Page and Fernando Poeiras

This post is part of a series of Drawing Exercises developed by Fernando Poeiras (ESAD.CR/LIDA) with Drawing Matter. Find the introduction to the series here. Good design is a good material solution. Within the boundaries of architecture, product, or landscape design, finding these solutions requires the application of the imagination… Read More

Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review

Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review

Matt Page

Alberto Cruz (1917–2013) was an architect and theorist who devoted most of his professional life to education. In 1952, he played an important role in revitalising the School of Architecture at the Universidad Catolica de Valparíso, Chile, founding the Instituto de Arquitectura de Valparaíso with eight of his colleagues, including… Read More

Interview with Space Magazine

Interview with Space Magazine

Matt Page and Semi Park

This interview was first published, in Korean translation, in SPACE Magazine. Drawing Matter would like to thank the editors of SPACE for allowing us to publish the English version of the text. Semi Park: Drawing Matter is an organisation that explores the role of drawings in architectural thinking and practice. Upon what… Read More

The Being of Drawing (2021) – Review

The Being of Drawing (2021) – Review

Matt Page

Joe Graham’s The Being of Drawing is the most recent book published by Marmalade Publishers of Visual Theory, the small press founded by the architect Gordon Shrigley in 2004. Marmalade’s catalogue of published titles challenges expectations of what a publishing house might be; to date, it has produced 12 books,… Read More

Echo: SuperStudio & Hans Hollein

Echo: SuperStudio & Hans Hollein

Matt Page

Where Words Fail

Where Words Fail

Cyril Babeev and Matt Page

This drawing, a sketched site plan annotated in cursive old-Russian, was published in May 1903 in the Saint Petersburg-based architecture magazine Zodchiy (Зодчій). [1] The plan describes a nearly-square plot sited perpendicular to a street (ulitza, улица) and divided into three areas: a house, represented by a white void; a garden in the… Read More

Behind the Walls

Behind the Walls

Matt Page

Albert, an artist known only by his first name, thinks about buildings in ways similar to an architect. As he draws, he imagines the structures on the page having a future life in bricks and mortar, considering as he does so whether the audience for his drawings will ask themselves,… Read More

James Gowan Millbank: Sketches and Comments

James Gowan Millbank: Sketches and Comments

Matt Page

The following text was first published in 1977 in an issue of AD Profiles dedicated to the Millbank Housing Competition. Run by the Crown Estate, the competition to develop a site adjacent to Vauxhall Bridge attracted nearly five hundred entries, including proposals from Alison and Peter Smithson, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano,… Read More

Aux Citoyens Membres de La Commune attachés à la commissions des services publics

Aux Citoyens Membres de La Commune attachés à la commissions des services publics

Matt Page

i Hector Horeau’s sketch of the Church of La Madeleine came at the height of the Paris Commune – the radical socialist regime that governed the French capital from 18 March – 28 May 1871. Although dated 19 April 1871, the drawing is on the verso of a frontispiece to Panorama… Read More