THE IN-VISIBLE, THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF ITS REPRESENTATION AND ITS INTERPRETATION IN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING

Transcription

1 Published in TRACEY journal Drawing Across Boundaries Sep 1998 Drawing and Visualisation Research THE IN-VISIBLE, THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF ITS REPRESENTATION AND ITS INTERPRETATION IN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING sota/tracey/ Proceedings of a symposium held at Loughborough University in September 1998 Ivana Wingham a a The University of Greenwich

2 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING AND ARCHITECTURE The relationship between architecture and architectural drawing seems to be one of distance. To realise a building a whole series of different drawings need to be done. At each stage of an architectural project, a different aspect of a building becomes represented. An architectural drawing from each stage of the project (conceptual sketch, visionary drawing, planning drawing, detailed drawing, contract drawing) conveys a different level of information about the final product - the architecture that is to be realised. This presumes that the role of an architectural drawing is to bring architecture into existence. The building or space comes into existence 'after the drawing, not before it' 1. Here, the appearance of architecture after the drawing may be seen in contrast to painting, 'where the subject or something like it is held to exist prior to its representation' 2. This distance between architectural drawing and architecture is inherent in an architectural drawing and what it attempts to represent. The modes of representation in architecture are usually associated with drawings and building of models, and are connected with architectural practice, where from a drawing a building appears, and through drawing 'the building is understood as the inevitable, the right and proper, end-point of the intention of the architect' 3. The architect, as opposed to the artist, in his labouring through the medium of a drawing, is 'never working directly with the object of their thought', so the drawing seems to be an 'intervening medium' 4. In this sense, the architect differs from the painter or sculptor who, while spending time on preliminary sketches and maquettes, ends up 'working on the thing itself' 5. This analysis sees architecture as 'productive of a reality', lying somewhere 'outside the drawing' 6, and it is primarily concerned with formal aspects of architectural representation. In this view, architectural drawing is something which comes before architecture rather than after it. There is however a second reality, one which exists before the building, and which is anticipated in an architectural drawing. It is a reality that might be called 'architecture of 1. From Evans, R., 'Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays', AA Documents 2, Architectural Association, 1997, p Ibid., p From Ingraham, C., 'Initial properties: architecture and the space of the line', in Sexuality and Space, Colomina, B., ed., Princeton papers in architecture, 1992, p From Evans, R., 'Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays', AA Documents 2, Architectural Association, 1997, p Ibid., p Ibid., p

3 social construct' 7, where space is already legally, morally, politically and socially coded and implies its existence prior to its representation and is contained and reflected within the occupation of a building. In this sense, the architectural drawing is means of speculation, where through representation, each drawing contributes towards a particular 'way of speculating about architecture in a particular manner' 8. FIGURE 1. CHATSWORTH INTERIOR, 1996, AUTHOR If we look at an example of socially-constructed space at the time of the polite society of the eighteenth century, with its desire for social life outside rigid hierarchies, we can see the introduction of a circuit of rooms (figure 1) in which the desire for social display is shifted into the visual domain. This social demand challenged the hierarchical arrangements of eating and sleeping for the primacy of visual display, and this became evident in the organisation of houses. Soon the organisation of social life occurred where many, rather then one, smaller social groupings appeared and more informality in social interactions began to take place. Instead of social life being a complete 'round game', the people were 'scattered in groups' and 'different people could now do different things at the same time and even in the same room'. These social interactions claimed privacy in the organisation of space which became evident in the drawings of Repton's Interiors (figures 2 & 3). 7. The definition of socially constructed architecture comes from Diller, E., and Scofidio, R., Flesh, architectural probes. Triangle Architectural Publishing and Princeton Architectural Press, From Chapter 10 'Representation', in Envisioning Architecture: An Analysis of Drawing, by Fraser, I., Henmi, R.,.Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NewYork,

4 FIGURES 2 & 3. INTERIORS, BY HUMPHREY REPTON, FROM THE ENGLISH HOUSE, BY JAMES CHAMBERS, METHUEN LONDON LTD., LONDON, 1985 The ambiguous relationship between drawing and architecture is reflected in architectural drawing. The drawing is in fact a transition from a socially constructed architecture into the production of another reality. At the same time, the drawing anticipates another socially determined reality. The drawing could be seen to 'hold down a space' 9 in providing for this anticipation. Anticipation reveals a relationship between the visible drawing and an invisible context. Depending how the drawing holds a space, the transition is determined from one reality to another. In other words, the drawing, by holding down a space, becomes a particular place and a particular site. Drawing, holding in its lines a particular place and a particular site, also holds the in-visible space of architect s anticipation. With anticipation, the visible lines of an architectural drawing expose the invisible realities. 9. Ingraham sees the loss of one identity and acquisition of another identity in terms of a particular transaction and relationship when holding down a space (or taking place), in Ingraham, C., 'Initial properties: architecture and the space of the line', in Sexuality and Space, Colomina, B., ed., Princeton papers in architecture, 1992, p She suggests the loss of narrative as the place becomes held down once drawn. We see this transition in a drawing, that holds down the space, as anticipation. 3

5 ANTICIPATION AND THE (IN)VISIBLE OF ARCHITECTURE IN AN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING The drawings of a finished building that the architect imagined, looking like the executed version, propose not only the arrangement of space but its materiality, proportion, scale, etc. From these drawings, we know how the building will look. However, what we do not know when looking at these drawings, but in the drawing process anticipate, are the possibilities of the occupation of that space based on our own experience, knowledge, culturally and socially constructed values and conventions. The architectural drawing is that particular place, the site, between socially constructed architecture (before the drawing) and architecture to be (after the drawing). At the site and place of a drawing, one feels as though at a border, where 'something ends and something else begins, or can begin' 10. Drawing is this place of a direction between the two. The drawing draws from and at the same time directs towards the possibilities of the occupation of space. This direction of a drawing is implicit in anticipation and speculation concerning the social life that either preceded it, or which the drawing is anticipating. FIGURE 4. UNTITLED, 1969, GOUACHE, WATERCOLOR AND PENCIL ON PAPER, BY EVA HESSE. FROM ON ABSTRACT ART, BY BRIONY FER, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN AND LONDON, 1997 The anticipation becomes particularly interesting when compared with an abstract drawing of an artist and an architectural drawing. Untitled by Eva Hesse (figure 4) is a drawing which attempts to depict emptiness, as well as a voiding of the centre. The drawing contains lines suggesting a border to emptiness, or void. The architectural plan of Bregenz gallery by Peter Zumthor (figure 5) is equally about the space within the centre, and the voids enclosed by walls. In the artist's drawing the blank space implies blankness, where 'the sheer lack of visual incident is itself vivid'11. In the architectural plan, the void or 10. From The invisible in Architecture, Editors O. Bouman, Academy Editions, London, 1994, p From On Abstract Art, Briony Fer, p.115 4

6 emptiness immediately implies the possibility of occupation and inhabitation (figure 6). Although in both drawings 'the meaning is dissimulated in the visible, which is nothing else than a mode of presentation of meaning' 12, an architectural drawing as a place implies the role of a line which denotes occupation. In this sense architectural drawing, by holding down a place, becomes the place of anticipation, where the invisible is in the visible. FIGURE 5. PLAN, KUNST HAUS BREGENZ BY PETER ZUMTHOR, 1998, PHOTO BY WOLFRAM JANZER/CONTUR, FROM ARCHITECTURE TODAY, NO 83, NOVEMBER 1997 FIGURE 6 INTERIOR, KUNST HAUS BREGENZ BY PETER ZUMTHOR 1998, PHOTO BY WOLFRAM JANZER/CONTUR The direction of architectural drawing embodies a dichotomy of virtuality, where not only a physical reality but socially constructed architectural space is anticipated by the architect. (S)he speculates on the invisible qualities of a reality outside the architectural drawing that exists within the building, and which is anticipated in the drawing. This anticipated reality of an invisible series of events, the socially constructed space that would occupy the space 12. From Dastur, F., 'Perceptual faith and the invisible', in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 25. No1, January 1994, p. 48 5

7 of the building, is impossible to represent within the lines of an architectural drawing. On the other hand, their representation becomes possible once the lines of the drawing are excluded. In examples of various possibilities of occupation of a space of gathering (figures 7, 8, 9), computer generated images consist of human figures holding particular places relative to their focus, in this case a stage. Relative to what happens on the stage, the human figures change their occupation of this particular space. However, in none of these examples is the reality of architectural space represented. These examples are what might be called analytical diagrams about space and its possible occupation, but they are not architectural drawings. They do not attempt to hold down a space. In an attempt to represent the possible occupation of space, the diagrams erase the lines of a drawing, in favour of representing particular possibilities of occupation of that space. In this sense, we might say that architecture, once drawn, implies an impossibility of representation of particular occupation. In other words, within the property of a line in an architectural drawing there seems to be an inherent impossibility of representation of social practices. This is similar to certain artistic practices of performance art or socially interactive installations. FIGURE 7. GATHERING BOX - LECTURE BY SIMON BIRD, 1998 FIGURE 8. GATHERING BOX - DISCUSSION BY SIMON BIRD,

8 FIGURE 9. GATHERING BOX - DISPLAY BY SIMON BIRD, 1998 THE INVISIBLE IN THE VISIBLE AND ITS (IM)POSSIBILITY OF REPRESENTATION - DRAWING AS DIRECTION The (im)possibility of representation of what we call social construction of space (which exists prior to architectural drawing and is coded) and its occupation (which will exist after the building comes into being and is anticipated) both claim presence in an architectural drawing. The visible architectural drawing contains another, in-visible space of architect s speculation and anticipation. Voids between the drawn lines of the walls provide for the anticipation of the possibility of habitation of that space whose occupation becomes another reality. FIGURE 10. SURFACE MODEL BY ALUN MORETON, 1998 This anticipation is present in every form of architectural drawing, included a fully rendered computer drawing. In a conventionally drawn architectural plan (figure 5), this anticipation is of the occupation and is of a material nature. Often the material nature is expressed in another form of architectural representation - working models (figure 10). In a fully 7

9 rendered computer produced architectural drawing (figure 11), the anticipation of materiality becomes evident in the drawing, and erases the needs for 'material' models. However, what may be lost at first glance is anticipation of how that space may be occupied, in favour of representing a particular possibility of occupation (figures 12 & 13). It is usually presumed that the 'realistic' representation of a computer drawing somehow excludes the speculation of possibilities. Although the computer image represents a socalled 'realistic' possibility of how space may be occupied, it is still an anticipation of reality. In this sense, the domain of an architectural drawing seems to lie in the anticipation of the invisible. FIGURE 11. SURFACE/ROOF COMPUTER MODEL BY ALUN MORETON, 1998 FIGURE 12. COMPUTER-GENERATED IMAGE BY MIKE CAMBDEN, 1998 This anticipation of the invisible is something that is not in contradiction to the visible, but 'the secret counterpart of the visible in the sense that it appears only within it, and, "it is not possible" to consider the invisible as another visible "possible", or a "possible" visible for another "because that would be to destroy the inner framework that joins us to it"' 13. In a drawing the anticipation is where 'the invisible is always the in-visible of the visible and it 13. Ibid., p. 48 8

10 is accessible as soon as seeing is given without needing to be thought' 14. It is in this sense that the visible is not separate from the invisible. We are not talking here of the invisible as something else visible behind the visible drawing, rather it is inscribed within. So architectural drawing in this sense could be seen as the sensible place, the site, where anticipation implies the direction, and where the invisible is captured in the visible (figure 14). In this way architectural drawing is seen as both the particular place and the particular site but equally as anticipation. FIGURE 13. COMPUTER-GENERATED IMAGE BY MIKE CAMBDEN, 1998 FIGURE 14. COMPUTER-GENERATED DEVELOPMENT MODEL BY ALUN MORETON, Ibid., p. 49 9