AbstractThe surface of an architectural drawing can be a cauldron of creativity, a place where even gravity and friction might not exist. Russian‐born and based in Paris, architecturally trained artist Kirill Chelushkin creates astounding, often large‐scale works that explore the ontology of drawing. Here he describes the inspirations for his machine‐related architectural representations, including Russian Constructivism and historical, battered and burnt blueprint drawings of the rapidly disappearing machines of the Soviet industrial complex.
This thesis is partly an attempt to explore the potential of pre-modern Chinese painting, on its distinctive formats and schemes to achieve spatial depth and time duration, as a way to interpret and design architecture. By a survey on changing modes of Chinese traditional landscape and cityscape paintings in different scales, the poetic language of painting will be gradually explored. Beyond pictorial techniques, language is concerned with an ideological level of understanding and experience. Thus, it signposts a wider significance of architectural representation – as a verbal medium to express narrative and critic semantics besides visual effects. In this thesis, we will also see how traditional painting remains a base in the ideating process of several contemporary Chinese architects, so to avoid a mere uncritical imitation of international models. A subtle fusion of contemporaneity with cultural identity afforded by the presence of taken concepts from traditional painting, allows this architecture to increase its meaning and dimension. Lastly, understanding such processes of ideation can possibly provide us assistance in the intuitive formulation of ways to enrich Western architecture. Particularly, establishing poetic connections to our cultural traditions can be a useful strategy to prevent Western architecture's frequent falls into empty excesses of utilitarianism, iconicism or simple banality. Esta tesis en parte intenta explorar la capacidad de la pintura china pre-moderna en sus peculiares formatos y esquemas para lograr expresar la profundidad del espacio y la duración del tiempo, como una manera de interpretar y diseñar arquitectura contemporánea. Mediante un estudio de la pintura tradicional de temática paisajística y urbana, y a diferentes escalas, se analizará el lenguaje poético de la pintura china. Más allá de las técnicas pictóricas, este lenguaje se sitúa en un nivel ideológico de comprensión y experiencia; expresa, por tanto, una gama de significados más amplia que la mera representación arquitectónica, actúa como lo haría un medio verbal para expresar una semántica de tipo crítico y narrativo, además de los consiguientes efectos visuales. En esta tesis, también veremos cómo la pintura tradicional sigue siendo la base del proceso de creación de ideas de varios arquitectos chinos contemporáneos para evitar así una mera imitación acrítica de modelos internacionales. Una fusión sutil de la contemporaneidad con la identidad cultural proporcionada por la presencia de conceptos de la pintura tradicional permite a esta arquitectura ganar nuevas capas de significado y dimensión. Por último, comprender tales procesos de ideación puede brindarnos ayuda en la formulación intuitiva de formas de enriquecer la arquitectura occidental. En particular, establecer conexiones poéticas con nuestras tradiciones culturales puede ser una estrategia útil para prevenir las frecuentes caídas de la arquitectura occidental en los excesos vacíos del utilitarismo, el iconicismo o la simple banalidad.
This paper discusses the role of catalogue drawing as a framing device to aid design thinking in the architectural design process. Catalogue drawing has been largely understood as a representation of the finished and curated design output. However, it is argued that catalogue drawing enables designers to handle, arrange, and process information, assisting them to frame this information for different needs of design discovery. This paper analyses the catalogue drawings produced by first-year Bachelor of Architecture Programme students in Universitas Indonesia in doing their first creative making project. The study highlights four categories of catalogue drawings with various roles, from catalogue drawing intended to capture the relevant information, investigate the particularities, create a bigger picture of the design condition, and outline the design proposition. The study found that each catalogue drawings were often repeated in loops throughout the design process, enabling the students to incrementally generate original design works. This study underlines the role of catalogue drawing in revealing the progression of design thinking that is often hidden throughout the architectural design process.
Power Drawing is the education programme of the Campaign for Drawing initiated by the Guild of St George. Primarily a research and development programme, it focuses on drawing in schools and other educational settings and investigates how the use of drawing can help children and young people learn in a variety of subjects. The intention is to develop a range of strategies, methods and techniques to support learning through drawing. This paper explains the ideas underpinning the programme, how it is organised and the research methods used. It describes and reflects on the experience of the first year of the action research, and comments on some of the satisfactions and tensions that have emerged. It outlines how these will influence further development.
Abstract Kolam is the 5,000-year-old art of making geometric floor drawings with rice flour, practiced by the Dravidian women of South India. This article introduces a point lattice-based method of visual organization that is derived from Kolam drawings. In it, a point lattice formed by a regularly spaced array of points is used to structure visual compositions, as an alternative to a network of orthogonal lines (also known as the grid). First, I show how the point lattice system is used to structure Kolam drawing compositions, including the lattice's construction, types, and uses. Second, through a formal analysis of such a points system in structuring forms, patterns, letters, and layouts in graphic design, I show that this system offers a whole alternate universe of compositional possibilities that are not apparent when graphic designers see a grid not as points, but as a series of constraining straight lines. Through this research, I look inward into the design ethos and tools present in Indian arts and crafts and present its application in contemporary design practice.
Our “Study of Failure” has shown the effects of failure case illustration and text based diagonal scenario expression to successfully convey the essence of failure cases to the reader. A well drawn failure case illustration generates a good image of the failure event in the readers mind, thus succeeds in passing the failure knowledge to the reader. A carefully produced diagonal scenario expression has the same effect. We demonstrated the power of these two fundamentally different representations through an experiment: A failure case illustration alone was shown to a group of people who were asked to define a diagonal scenario expression for the case. The reverse test started from a diagonal scenario expression to reach an illustration that the group had no prior knowledge about. Our tests showed that people can produce a fairly good representation in the other form starting from either an illustration or a diagonal scenario alone.