Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Drawing is an essential skill of the architect. It is an embodied and phenomenological process that expresses ideas, forms, and feelings. Abstract and conceptual hand-drawing is preparatory development which allows students of architecture to imagine and utilise other ways and means of thinking and making. The current excessive use of CAD drawing as a design tool, exclusively focused on keyboard inputs and lines on a screen, is limiting students’ ability to work in a zone of the imagination whereby imagery is generated by the sensory body and not as a functional recording. The ‘happy accident’ of marks on paper can inspire a new thought or prompt the imagination. Which, unlike CAD, where all ‘marks’ on the screen are seemingly perfect, yet remote. The process I will discuss and show in this study is from my ‘Drawing from your Imagination’ workshops. To start the drawings black Indian ink is splashed and smeared on large sheets of white paper. Once the ink is dry the students use pencils to draw in a more technical way using drafting utensils such as compass, ruler, triangles, circle template, and eraser. The ‘technical’ drawing is overlaid on the Indian ink ‘image’, which acts as an inspiration for the imagination. The pencil drawing emerges in, around, and through the ink marks. I regularly use similar teaching and learning methods in my architecture design studios to develop a sense of freedom and energy for drawing as a necessity to confront the difficult task of conceptualising and designing architecture.