Vivisection in Architecture: an embodied reading of the room by drawing (original) (raw)
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PSIAX, 2017
This paper concerns some practical drawing work that has been done with a group of students from the point of view of its suitability as a generative and speculative means of suggesting how space may be articulated, with a view to architecture. In respect of the remit of the conference, the reference is to perception and cognition in drawing in the context of teaching and learning in creative programs at university. The paper is written against a background of a first year, second semester drawing class. The class meetings were once a week of three hours, with twenty South Korean students studying in design degree programs through the medium of English language. Students were made aware of the spatial contextualizing of the drawing exercises through the attendant question of movement, while this paper considers the efficacy of the approach to the work, and its results, from the point of view of architecture. The paper’s theoretical contention in the context of architecture follows an opinion of the architect and educator Peter Eisenman, concerning what may be paraphrased as the lack of relationship between planimetric articulation of space, through architectural drawing, and one’s “affective” understanding and presence of oneself in space. The exercises of the paper’s referenced drawing class concerned the students’ citing and positioning of their own bodies in space, as a means of articulating space through using oneself as the object, and the paper has introduced the experiential and phenomenological implications of this. One of the two referenced exercises was carried through to the beginnings of three-dimensional structuring, and has therefore been illustrated. The implication of the exercises in the architectural context discussed in the paper is that the drawings are useful for generating ideas of how to structure space from the initial sense of presence of oneself in space.
Sketching and knowing, a vision on the sketchbooks' aesthetic power
In a thin book from 1925, Klee describes in a sharp and clear way the power of the sketch. This guideline for sketching was written in the context of the Bauhaus educational program. The perception of reality and the conclusions one can connect to it are for Klee inextricably linked with each other. The sketch is for him a starting point for contemplation. The sketch as a final result, is accessed through the action of drawing. Registration and (very important) the "conclusion" come together at one point. Starting from the "optical-physical appearance" an intuitive critical mass is constructed. That brings us immediately to the key question: which factors play a role in constructing "the intuitive conclusions"? And more specifically: how and when is the aesthetic component involved in the specific action of the observation sketch? In the past several studies have been devoted to the particular use through history of the sketch in architecture and its contribution to art. In all these studies the description of what you see (final result) and the analysis of the personal (art)expression of the artists' hand embedded in the historical context are the main focal points. 2
DIALOGHI / DIALOGUES • visioni e visualità / visions and visuality
Since the development of drawing techniques and geometric projections in the Renaissance, architectural drawing has been the most relevant tool to mediate in the design process. Alberti' s conception of architectural representation and project anticipated in a practical way the idea of notational systems developed centuries later by Goodman. Thus, architects replaced master builders' professional tradition and gained the recognition for architecture as a liberal art and as a creative endeavour. Their ability to project and represent architecture anticipating not only its visual appearance but also its geometric constitution through drawing introduced a substantial change, allowing architects to convey their design to third parties due to the allographic nature of architectural drawing. This research attempts to focus on these issues in relation to ideation processes and graphic thinking derived from architects' drawing practice, questioned by some with the advent of digital tools. Sketches have been used by architects to establish a dialogue between them and their architectural creative labour which, to some extent, is triggered by the action of drawing itself. These freehand sketches are based on projections but the looseness and inaccuracy of them renders a degree of openness which is seminal within the architectural design process. These drawings are transformed into presentation drawings during the design process to reach a final form. The second type of drawings properly represent architecture in a more precise and notational way. These two types of drawings could be referred to as 'imaginative' and 'notational' in accordance to their different features, despite they are related to the same architectural referent. Yet, every phase in the project is creative as the project defines and anticipates built architecture.
Part I: How and why does sketching deliver
of the paper 1 In the earlier paper, we started with a hypothesis that sketching delivers because of the way designers handle, use and 'misuse' it. This paper investigates 'How?' and 'Why?' it delivers. It appears that designers get much more out of the act of sketching than their planned functions permit. Designers seem to exploit this fully. When working with spatial problems, the kind that designers encounter, we saw that motoric actions in form of hand and body movements play important role. These actions often manifest in form of accompanying gestures. The act of sketching can be seen as a class of gestures that pins down the designer to 2D and/or 3D space. That is why we treated sketching as planned gestures that help designer think and conceptualize in space. Sketches also offer a depictive display. Designers treat this display to react, update and interact with them. They treat the displays as soft, pliable and so quickly updatable. Occasionally, designers distance themselves from the sketches to review them dispassionately. Switching the roles between the creator and critic, they even hold meaningful conversation with these sketches. So far we have attributed these potentials to the designer's abilities to exploit sketching. Designers are not alone in this. Much of this behavior could be traced back to practices in visual arts from which designers
Sketching as a record of thoughts
2018
The significant and indispensable role of sketching in a creative process is emphasizes in the paper. Within this process, sketches represent an internal conversation that takes place inside the author’s mind and involves ongoing verification and adjustments to the author’s way of thinking. On the other hand, freehand drawing is a form of a dialogue with reality, and offers an opportunity for its exploration and discovery. Thanks to a certain degree of unpredictability inherent to sketching, sketches are indispensable in the creative process. They prove to be particularly useful when ideation turns out to be insufficient or when a problem is more likely to be solved by “externalising” the thinking (the process of restructuring – creating an analogy, mutation and combination of forms by sketching). Due to the fact that education of future architects today focuses on drawing less than in the past, students find it increasingly more difficult to develop their skill of creative “thinkin...
The sketch as an expression in architectural design idea
ABSTRACT The drawings as a tool of visualization an architectural idea reflects on the architectural thinking in the designing and shows its relation to the environmental and the cultural heritage. The architect shows in his/ her drawings authority in the construction of new forms in the space, together with a sense of the spirituality and the creative passion lacking in other forms of the presentation. The report shows the stages in the architectural design with the methods for visualization and the place of drawing in them. It highlights the similarities and the interactions between hand-crafted conceptual drawings of the architect, the perspective drawings and the computer images for visualization in the design process. Author`s thesis is that drawing, as appropriate, managed the primary education in the architecture, can visualize and suggest the most direct idea of the future architect. The expended results are relevant to the contemporary education in the drawing in specialty architecture EPGs. They are part of the thesis of the author with a topic,, Drawing as a tool for visualization and development of the architectural idea in designing” and can outline future research endeavors in this area.
Architectural Drawing: Architecture's Speculative Visual History
This Thing Called Theory, 2017
This paper explores the apprehension of meaning in architectural drawing afforded through each drawing's structuring 'diagram'. Rather than being confi ned to technique alone, the 'diagram' of an architectural drawing helps to inform its delivery of visual meaning. Through their diagram, architectural drawings, and more specifi cally presentation drawings, anticipate a response to the theoretical proposition of the architecture portrayed. In this manner, and in order to deliver meaning beyond technical representation, architectural drawings can anticipate a role for a viewing subject that frames the bodily interaction between viewer and viewed image.
The development of new computer tools has greatly affected architectural language itself introducing a change within the history of a millenary discipline that could be easily paralleled to the discovery of linear perspective during the Renaissance. However, architectural drawing has not been affected in the same way –disregarding 3D modelling and computer renders-; that is to say, not the obvious revolution borne from the extraordinary capacity to work on a virtual three dimensional space and the possibility to anticipate the hyper-realistic final outlook of an architectural design but an equivalent key turn in 2D architectural drawing. In fact, architectural plans look quite the same now as they did before the advent of computer drawing tools. Our reflections here are based on the following questions that could be understood as starting hypothesis: Should architectural drawing disregard the theme of representation? Can a man transformed territory, a technologically advanced building or a changing cityscape be depicted or represented likewise? Is it possible to develop different graphic narratives to acquire connotative, evocative and reference values that may highlight the architectural qualities of every particular architectural project in a customized way according to its specific values? And last, but not least, can different drawing techniques and graphic resources generate design strategies? This paper discusses how architects may need to transform conventional modes of representation according to the content they want to convey. This is not only to explore the design strategy as a result of the graphic process developed throughout the project or the different graphic narratives used but also to reflect on the search for a specific mode of drawing. Each project should have its own way to be drawn. The final graphic results, however neat they may be, are not the main goal of this research; it is more a question of specific drawings for specific narratives, on the one hand, and the record of the graphic process as a design strategy, on the other. This research also arises from the assumption that we should accept as a starting point that the work of architecture can be transmitted through drawings, without abandoning the usual graphic codes, but enriching them through their processing or simple selection, making more effective graphic communication in order to evidence the qualities of the building as opposed to others that may be relegated, nuanced or denied. The use of diagrams, photo-collages or analytical drawings may well work as different notations of graphic thoughts. Finally, our scope of study is focused on a series of drawings produced during the diploma year of the degree in architecture at the University of Alicante in the Internationalization Studio.