Collection
The Drawing Matter Collection catalogue describes over 20,000 objects—drawings, models, collages, photographs, and publications, with an international scope and dating from the Renaissance onwards. These relate principally to architecture, but there are also significant holdings around theatre, cinema, costume, metalwork, furniture, landscape and urban design.
The catalogue can be navigated using search terms with filters, or through Groups, which are organised by architects and themes. We encourage you to explore the catalogue alongside our repository of over 1200 texts, many of which address objects from the Collection (indicated by the DMC tag).
For a different point of entry, we have recently started working with invited scholars to compile Research Guides to particularly significant bodies of material—either by an individual architect or an architectural movement.
Like the Collection itself, we view the catalogue as an open work and the descriptive information for each drawing is not advanced as definitive. Many catalogue entries include links to ‘Paper Files’ which record our evolving understanding of the drawings. These contain commentaries and notes written at different times and by divergent voices—we invite you to engage and to suggest comments by contacting collection@drawingmatter.org.
Read more about how the Collection started and Drawing Matter’s approach to collecting here, or listen to Niall Hobhouse in conversation with Tim Abrahams on the Superurbanism Podcast.
Research Visits
The Collection is open to individual researchers from Tuesday to Friday by appointment, subject to our workshop and seminar commitments. Please email collection@drawingmatter.org with a description of your project.
Workshops for Teaching Studios and Practitioners
Click here for more information about visiting the collection as a teaching studio or practice group.
Copyright and Contacts
Please direct general enquiries and exhibition loan requests to collection@drawingmatter.org.
All copyrights remain the property of Drawing Matter Collections, or of the architects (or their Estates) whose drawings are in the Collection. Please contact image.requests@drawingmatter.org for more information about rights and reproductions.
