Course Description
Drawing has been essential to architecture for centuries, but its status today is in flux. Students are rarely trained specifically in drawing techniques as they once were, yet they are expected to have a facility with it. This course will examine the practice of drawing in Renaissance Italy, considering the origin of elements we take for granted, such as the sketch or the plan, section and elevation. But what makes the drawings of this period so vital is that the conventions were not yet fixed, but rather fluid and constantly open to innovation, revision, and transformation. It will also focus on key modern architects, such as Le Corbusier and Zaha Hadid, for whom drawing was central to their practice. Other architects to be considered through individual student projects might include John Hedjuk, Peter Zumthor, Archigram (Peter Cook, Ron Arad), Steven Holl, Aldo Rossi, Massimo Scolari, Carlo Scarpa, Tadao Ando, Roberto Burle Marx, and Madelon Vriesendorp, among many others. The last part of the course will look at the present and future of drawing, through speculative readings and exercises.
The course will focus on art historical analyses of these problems and in class discussion
Project
Projects must reflect substantial research on any topic broadly covered by the umbrella of the course, however the particular subject and format is very flexible. A selection of possible architects and topics will be given to you, but you may also select your own topic with the instructor’s approval. The assignment will be broken down into four components: a proposal, a draft and a final submission. Possibilities include but are not limited to the production of analytical or observational drawings with a critical component; making a documentary video; or a traditional research paper.
Regardless of format, final projects must include a bibliography with at least five scholarly sources (either essays published in peer-reviewed journals or books published by University presses), and, if it is a visual project, a two-page account of the purpose and form of the work.
The most important element of the paper or project is that you use it to formulate your own argument about the subject you choose. In other words, you should develop your point of view about your chosen topic into a statement with which someone else might reasonably disagree, and use your research and writing to substantiate your statement.
The proposal and the project cannot be discussion of any of the reading listed, it could be related to one or more topics listed but not the same readings.
Please come up with one page proposal for the final research paper. Include topic, thesis, statement, argument and simple outline for the paper structure.
Below is the list of readings for each class so that you have ideas of what were covered and what topics are coming up
Thursday Jan. 10 Architecture as Profession and as Practice
Elizabeth Merrill, The Professione di Architetto in Renaissance Italy, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76 (2017): pp. 13-35
Thursday Jan. 17 Why did architects draw?
Cammy Brothers, “What Drawings Did in Renaissance Italy,” in The Companion to Early Modern Architecture, ed. Alina Payne, Blackwell Press, 2017
James Ackerman, “The Origins of Sketching,” in Origins, Invention, Revision, 2016, pp. 1-20
Thursday Jan. 24 Why do architects draw?
Edward Robbins, “The Social uses of Drawing: Drawing and Architectural Practice,” in Why Architects Draw, pp. 1-51
Thursday Jan. 31 How do artists and architects draw?
James Ackerman, “The Conventions and Rhetoric of Architectural Drawing,” in Origins, Imitation, Conventions, 2002, pp. 293-318
Howard Burns, “Drawing the Project,” in Burns and Beltramini, Palladio (2008), pp. 300-303,
Hugo Chapman, “The function and survival of Italian fifteenth-century drawings,” pp. 20-75 in Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings
Raphael, Letter to Leo X, excerpts
Thursday Feb. 7 Drawing as Translation
Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing to Building,” in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, 153-194.
Thursday Feb. 14 Modernism and Drawing: Le Corbusier, part 1
Danièle Pauly, “The World ‘At the Tip of a Pencil,’” in Le Corbusier: Drawing as Process, pp. 15-94
Thursday Feb. 21 Modernism and Drawing: Le Corbusier, part 2
Jacob Brillhart, “Italy,” pp. 63-93 and “Journey to the East,” pp. 139-188 in Voyage le Corbusier: Drawing on the Road
Selections from Carnet de Voyage
Thursday Feb. 28 Contemporary architecture: Zaha Hadid
Detlef Mertins, “The Modernity of Zaha Hadid,” in Zaha Hadid [Guggenheim], 2007, pp. 33-38
Thursday March 14 Contemporary architecture: why draw now?
Neil Spiller, “Introduction: Architectural Drawing: Grasping for the Fifth Dimension,” pp. 14-19
Architectural Design, Vol. 05/2013no. 225
Mark Morris, “All Night Long: The Architectural Jazz of the Texas Rangers,” pp. 20-27
Nic Clear, “Drawing Time,” pp. 70-79
Mas Yendo, “Could Architectural Drawings Save Us from Philosophical Bankruptcy,” pp. 124-127
Peter Cook, “Looking and Drawing,” in Architectural Design, special curated issue, Oct, 2013, pp. 80-87
Simon Herron, “Plug-In, Clip-On, Tune-Up,: A Throwaway Architecture with Optional Extras,” pp. 95-101
Mario Carpo, “The Art of Drawing,” same, pp. 128-133
Thursday March 21 The Future of drawing?
Penelope Haralambidou, “With-drawing Room on Vellum: The Persistent Vanishing of the Architectural Drawing Surface,” in Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture, ed. Laura Allen and Luke Caspar Pearson, London, 2016. Pp. 82-89.
Carl Lostritto, “A Collection of Circle-Spheres: A Pre-Digital Post-Digital Convergence,” in Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture, ed. Laura Allen and Luke Caspar Pearson, London, 2016, pp. 256-260
And additional selections from Drawing Futures, t.b.a.
Sample Solution
