Sixteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Students new to architectural drawing are challenged with ‘seeing’ architecture through representation. Learning to draw as a transformation of seeing must involve a range of seeing experiences to enable representation to make sense. Learning to draw orthographic drawings challenges ‘seeing’ by making engagement of imagination subservient to the tedium of precisely constructing line drawings. Charcoal drawing instead flips the challenge of representing buildings – imagination informs and what is learned enhances rather than challenges ‘seeing.’ Charcoal drawing offers a pedagogical antidote to diminished imaginative thinking. This paper explains the pedagogical use of charcoal in an architectural drawing course in which many have never before drawn. Black and white architectural photographs by Ezra Stoller, Julius Schulman, and Berenice Abbott comprise subject matter. The study shows that charcoal drawing engages ways of seeing that measurable drawings do not, in the following: 1. Charcoal’s reduction to black and white displays the experiential and spatial content of architecture as a range of light and shadow. 2. Because of #1 students discover that architecture is activated by light, overlooked compared with form, structure, or material. 3. Charcoal does not allow the making of detailed marks, necessitating engagement of imagination during the drawing process to represent light on a surface. 4. Because charcoal drawing is an imprecise media, details are imagined rather than ‘in’ the drawing. 5. Because charcoal drawing is an atmospheric whole it looks more accomplished than it is. 6. Charcoal drawing transforms ‘seeing’ in students (e.g. imprecise marks may better express an architectural idea).