Writer: Matt Page
Quantum Collecting: A Few Principles and Mechanisms for the Acquisition of Architectural Drawings
6 November 2023
Quantum Collecting: A Few Principles and Mechanisms for the Acquisition of Architectural Drawings6 November 2023
– 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
Drawing Exercises: Design Process
14 July 2023
Drawing Exercises: Design Process14 July 2023
– 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
12 July 2023
Drawing Exercises: Creativity12 July 2023
– 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
2 December 2022
Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review2 December 2022
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
20 June 2022
Interview with Space Magazine20 June 2022
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
4 April 2022
The Being of Drawing (2021) – Review4 April 2022
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
Where Words Fail
6 April 2020
Where Words Fail6 April 2020
– 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
23 March 2020
Behind the Walls23 March 2020
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
9 December 2019
James Gowan Millbank: Sketches and Comments9 December 2019
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
Fraser Stables: Remembering Architecture
6 September 2023
Fraser Stables: Remembering Architecture 6 September 2023
– 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
art practice domestic interior