“Conceive the building in the imagination, not on paper but in the mind, thoroughly – before touching paper.”
– Frank Lloyd Wright
In sum: architectonic drawings are a code to be decoded, so lets!
Mark Hewitt begins his text by suggesting a new synthetic approach to the study of architectural representation and its influence on thought, to bridge the gap between architectural and intellectual history and design methodology (p. 2). It makes sense that the methods used by architecture historians would be similar to those of art historians since representation is oftentimes considered in itself an artifact. I, however, also understand Hewitt’s attempt to find new ways. His proposed triad conception-conditions-perception is a valid and helpful attempt. Conception made me think of film pre-production. A conceptual process is the pattern of thought followed to bring together a piece of work. Some people have “systems” to do so and some don’t. Either way can be successful and the author discusses the Mozarts and Beethovens of the world. I’ve heard doodling is a sign of genius and can see how throughout history, sketches have been a key to understand thought processes followed by designers. Ackerman mentions the same thing on his text, that sketches present possible structure to what might not be fully materialized in the designer’s mind apropos of Cartesian psychology (p. 308). Conditions, then, suggest that style parameters limit artists even though the mind is limitless. Scenography made me think of storyboard artists with its “scena per angolo.” It was interesting to read how sometimes design problems require the invention of new drawing styles in order to be resolved (very progressive.) So creating a “chronology” of mind habits sounds like a very sensible solution to building a framework for different modes of perception and to understand why we draw and do architecture like we do. Hewitt continues with perception: how we see is how we draw or how we visualize mentally. Yet, why do we see what we see and how? Borromini drew as if looking down at his buildings, Le Corbu edited his sketches even after the buildings were made, the sequence “The view from Jimmy’s window” contains 5 (!) narrative lines. I though of movies like Memento or Inception -did the directors have the entire film structured in their heads before editing?- All of them, in their own way and time, are pioneers with superior individual forms of conception.
Just like Hewitt was trying to create a chronology of the development of architectural drawings, Bredehoft also exposes different methodologies to analyze comics: he suggest either taking them in ‘beat by beat’ or seeing them as an entire opus or “facade of a building” (p. 870). The structural practice of comics reminded me, again, of storyboard artists. Bredehoft proposes the study of mental processes in order to understand and states that even though images form in the retina, it is more “constructed and contingent” a process than that. The architecture of the comic breaks the linearity of narrative since elements oftentimes stand side by side. So he toys with conventional interpretative rules. Ackerman is more formal in his approach although he touches similar subject matter. He also establishes that architectural drawing conventions are elements of a language colored by not only the architect’s perception buy by social and political forces. He traces back to the origins of sketching and studies different elements and materials. It was interesting to learn that paper was formatted based on drawing boards which themselves followed the human body form. And that pen or graphite were used for different effects. The “character” of the drawing instrument was profoundly (and still is) related to what was traced, to the point that military and mechanical engineers developed themselves techniques and tools to solve their own sketching issues, just like Japanese painters did.
Ackerman discusses Section and Perspective and I realized that perspective creates a lot of drama as it incorporates depth. The Plan on the other hand requires a lot of imagination from the viewer in the reader/user-character/object identification that Bredehoft discusses. Le Corbu again, who was known for changing his plans (literally and metaphorically), is also referred to quite a bit in this text when speaking of perception. So all these tools and techniques facilitated the flow of narrative in its own way since different draftsmen can “provide” completely different buildings. Individual observation, perspective and forms of rendering are surely enough as personal as handwriting. I liked the example of Castel of San Angelo in Rome, which was sketched to “overwhelm the viewer with what the artist saw as its awesome power.” (p. 311)
Hypothesis were relative to the school, the time or the eye and new technologies like CAD presents us with even new possibilities, not attainable on the drawing table. Dan Hill writes on his blog about producing photomontages in order to show how the city might be transformed by informatics. He invited his students to write on photographs of a street scene and “imagine all the data that could be derived from the scene via sensors and then go on to sketch interventions or hacks into those scenes, drawn from such data sources.” (http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2009/09/teaching-and-drawing-urban-sensing.html) What a fun way of channeling new forms of narrative construction. He says that writing is as important as drawing and I take the opportunity to question the Greek who drew with words: was it not more writing with drawings?
All three authors, and the MoMA and Howard Gilman collections (spent hours navigating those), made me wonder if narration is really accomplished entirely in the realm of language? If so, to what extent? Aren’t buildings there to tell us something anyway? “Without consistent, documented, reliably identified evidence in the form of drawings, no more than an outline of the history of architectural representation is possible.” (Hewitt, p. 9) Devices may dictate the destiny of the narrative and the tension between narrative and chronological line has been around since the times of Haiku and I-Ching, where the modification of even the most minimal components implies a different story. So I guess writing -and building- with drawings is fair game too.
T