Writer: Matt Page
Walter Marchetti: Observation of the Movements of a Fly
04.04.2025
E. W. Godwin and the Mild Mild West
13.01.2025
E. W. Godwin and the Mild Mild West13.01.2025
From this drawing it would seem unlikely that the side elevation at its centre would one day be photographed thousands of times and attract the interest of people from all over the world. It appears unremarkable, especially when compared to the gutsy brick detailing and gothic flourishes of the building’s… Read More
Ian Hamilton Finlay at Drawing Matter
06.01.2025
Ian Hamilton Finlay at Drawing Matter06.01.2025
Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and educated in Scotland from the age of six. He briefly studied at the Glasgow School of Art and joined the British Army in 1942. After the war, Finlay worked as a shepherd while producing paintings, short plays and stories. He… Read More
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein
29.05.2024
Begin again. Fail Better: Pichler and Hollein29.05.2024
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
06.11.2023
Quantum Collecting: A Few Principles and Mechanisms for the Acquisition of Architectural Drawings06.11.2023
– 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
Fraser Stables: Remembering Architecture
06.09.2023
Fraser Stables: Remembering Architecture 06.09.2023
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
14.07.2023
Drawing Exercises: Design Process14.07.2023
– 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
12.07.2023
Drawing Exercises: Creativity12.07.2023
– 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
02.12.2022
Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review02.12.2022
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
20.06.2022
Interview with Space Magazine20.06.2022
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
04.04.2022
The Being of Drawing (2021) – Review04.04.2022
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
06.04.2020
Where Words Fail06.04.2020
– 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
23.03.2020
Behind the Walls23.03.2020
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
09.12.2019
James Gowan Millbank: Sketches and Comments09.12.2019
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
2024 Architecture Summer School: Translations between drawings and models
27.09.2024
2024 Architecture Summer School: Translations between drawings and models27.09.2024
– 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
education architectural drawing summer school