The field of drawing, as practice and discourse, seems to have entered an end-condition, where the celebration of the extensive production of drawings is combined with a certain fatigue in both its understanding and reflection. Drawing, nowadays, seems to be suspended in this in-between condition of objectivity and instrumentality, as image and information, as communication and science, whereas the theoretical field generated between these polarities seems to have lost its theoretical poignancy.
The seventh issue of Footprint attempts to address this contemporary state of affairs within a disciplinary understanding of the drawn theory of architecture. The premise of raising this issue originates from the critical exploration of a field within architectural theory that in the last decades has seen a progressive ‘de-problematization’. Even though the role of drawing is nowadays still regarded as the most common act of architecture, this understanding of drawing is hardly subject to critical inquiries, and, unfortunately, mostly limited to its instrumental role within the representation of the project.
Stefano Milani is a PhD researcher at TU Delft.
Marc Schoonderbeek is a member of Footprint's Editorial Board.
Stefano Milani and Marc Schoonderbeek | Drawing Theory. An Introduction
Abstract 
Article [free PDF]
Nowadays, drawing practices seem to operate in a rather uncertain field that is typical of an in-between phase of disciplinary development and that needs to be addressed, if an ‘anticipated projection’ of the development of drawing is to be attempted. The field of drawing, as practice and discourse, seems to have entered an end-condition, where the celebration of the extensive production of drawings is combined with a certain fatigue in both its understanding and reflection. Even though the role of drawing is nowadays still regarded as the most common act of architecture, this understanding of drawing is hardly subject to critical inquiries, and, unfortunately, mostly limited to its instrumental role within the representation of the project.
A common characteristic in all of the papers in this issue of Footprint is that a specific character of the theoretical field generated by drawing is the elaboration of the correlation between two epistemic regions. This singular character probably belongs to drawing’s structural duality of being simultaneously a simulacrum of a reality and reality itself, memory and anticipation, subject and object, by being in essence the measure of two different facets inherent to architectural thinking. Drawing not only gives consistency to the poles, rendering them architectural matter, but also literally (re)constructs them. At the same time, drawing formalizes the theoretical distance between the two.
J. Kent Fitzsimons | The Body Drawn Between Knowledge and Desire
Abstract Article [free PDF]
The architectural drawing brings together two aspects of architecture’s inescapable relationship with the human body: knowledge and desire. When Adolf Loos designed the never built Josephine Baker House (1928), his drawings mobilized and transmitted knowledge of the human body in general. At the same time, Loos deployed architectural means to express desire for the dancer’s body. The sections and plans suggest that the Viennese architect imagined Baker swimming in a pool whose submerged walls include large windows looking into the watery stage, enveloping the dancer’s body while putting it on display for guests. Considered more generally, the architectural drawing always contains these two bodily moments, insofar as it describes proposals that give form to the lived world. This dynamic couple in the drawing corresponds to the difference between touching the body and grasping it; between an architect pursuing the desire to affect others through their senses and an architectural discipline extending its knowledge of human existence. This article considers relevant aspects in the writings of Robin Evans, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, William T. Mitchell, and Jean-Luc Nancy to develop a theoretical basis for understanding the tensions and alliances at play when architecture draws the body between knowledge and desire.
Gevork Hartoonian | Bernard Tschumi Draws Architecture!
Abstract Article [free PDF]
Bernard Tschumi’s delineation prepared for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea provides the starting point for this essay, which discusses the historicity of drawing and highlights the horizontality and the verticality that structure architecture’s contrast with the pictorial realm. Juxtaposing a freehand sketch with the digital image of the same project, Tschumi moves to address the paradox concerning the position of the body and drawing. This drawing also speaks for the reversal in the position of the body brought about by digital reproductivity. The reversal alludes to Tschumi’s theorization of architecture in terms of space and event. These, I will argue, are anticipated in The Manhattan Transcripts (1981) where a set of freehand drawings is used to evoke a filmic mood wherein the image is projected parallel to the spectator’s seated position. The essay goes further, suggesting that the theatricality permeating the present architecture is part of the shift from horizontality to the painterly, and yet the phenomenon is not merely a technical issue. Rather, it alludes to architecture’s dialogical rapport with painting at work since the Renaissance.
Anne Bordeleau and Liana Bresler | Drawing the Map: Siting Architecture
Abstract Article [free PDF]
Architects increasingly favour mapping as a means of documentation. Through maps, they question and define the boundaries of their architectural intervention, the premise being that if they can adequately delaminate and map the site's found conditions, they may achieve a more complex understanding of the said site. If maps can successfully represent sets of complex interactions in an effective manner, they also have an objectifying tendency and are often criticized for being tools of domination as well for their propensity to stabilize space-time. Further, architectural mapping is often associated with the possibility to index the 'designer's syntactical code', a possibility coupled with the idea that 'none of the notations take precedence over any other', so as to encourage 'more plural, open-ended "performances" of the project-in-time'. These positions involves if not a pure scientific objectivity, at least the assumption that one may somehow sidestep the projection of the author's intentionality. Bringing these issues to light, the paper explores whether mapping could address temporality with an assumed depth that would re-responsibilize the architect mapmaker while still remaining open to the users' multiple readings in time. Our contention is that rather than relying on rules, syntax and sequences of transformations, architects may approach mapping as a creative act that is open to different temporalities, involving both a willingness to listen and a readiness to act, allowing stories to emerge all the while stepping up as the narrator. Focusing on the phenomenological dimension of drawing and the epistemological bearings of mapping, the paper reveals some of the ways in which architects can question the relation between architecture and time through their graphic representation.
B.D. Wortham-Galvin | The Woof and the Warp of Architecture: The Figure-Ground in Urban Design
Abstract Article [free PDF]
To borrow a metaphor used by Georg W.F. Hegel in the Philosophy of History to describe historical processes, architecture should be understood as a series of complex threads wherein one recognizes the physical forms as the warp, and the temporal, socio-political, natural, and aural contexts as the woof. Fabric is asserted as a concept broader than the immediate spatial and physical situation in which individual buildings are located; and, the threads of the fabric are all of those elements that aid in making the built environment both a designed and lived experience. In order to discuss this proposed understanding of fabric, this paper will look at how drawings informed the process and theory of urban design in the mid- to late-twentieth century. The discussion will focus on the origins of the Nolli plan and its 'rediscovery' by the Cornell School and their use of the figure-ground as a primary tool in the formulation of an urban design theory. The trajectory of the figure-ground can reinvigorate contemporary urban design praxis once more by reasserting drawing as more than mere illustration but as a means to conceptualize design methodologies that support a holistic notion of fabric.
Jan Bovelet | Drawing as Epistemic Practice in Architectural Design
Abstract Article [free PDF]
The essay deals with drawing as a genuine form of knowledge in architectural design. Drawing is described as an epistemic practice enmeshed with historically changing, material spaces of knowledge. Starting with a brief examination of historic philosophical positions on the epistemicity of drawing, the essay tries to sketch out a tentative heuristic of the epistemic features of drawing from the perspective of symbol and media theory. In the last part, with reference to Nelson Goodman’s distinction between analogue and digital symbol systems, the digitalization of drawing is critically reviewed. The main point is to emphasize that the transformation of drawing into digital drawing formats always consist of a translation. It is crucial to take the challenges stemming from the indeterminacy of translation (W.v.O. Quine) into consideration in order to understand both the epistemic restrictions and the potentials of drawing under the conditions of the rising digital habitat.
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